


Broken Things

by Bazylia_de_Grean



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-04
Updated: 2015-02-18
Packaged: 2018-03-10 12:00:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 26,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3289565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bazylia_de_Grean/pseuds/Bazylia_de_Grean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Rain can be storm and flood. And can be the blood of growing wheat and the source of life."<br/>"You are saying I am to choose?"<br/>"You had already chosen. And it should not have gone the way it did. But perhaps now it's time to be just Wardens."<br/>"I can't forget, even if I wanted to. I need to remember." But he also remembers her voice, telling him to breathe.</p><p>(After the events of DA:Inquisition, Blackwall joins the Grey Wardens in Ferelden.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

“The Wardens have no past,” the Inquisitor says before the recruit, Thom Rainier, can speak. A little too quickly.

She understands what it is to care for a friend. But she will not accept a lie. Yes, the Wardens have always recruited thieves and traitors and murderers for their cause if there was the need, she herself has done so, but she always _knew_. And this time it will be no different. “To forget the past, I must know what to forget.” There are Wardens in Orlais. In the Free Marches. There must be a reason the Inquisitor has written to her, has chosen Ferelden.

The Inquisitor wants to speak, but Rainier steps forth, and bows to her. A courtly bow. So he was no mere soldier.

His features are set into a mask of resolve. “You deserve to know...” he breaks off, not knowing how to call her.

“Lady Cousland is my title,” she explains, and there is a slightest grimace at the corner of his mouth. So despite his friendship with the Inquisitor he does not like nobles. Not that she can really hold that against him, after spending a week at the court as empress Celene’s oh so honoured guest. “But you may call me Commander.”

* * *

 

Her voice is clear and delicate like fine glass, but not brittle. There is strength hidden there, in those soft notes. It is, he notices, a voice one wants to listen to. For a moment, irrationally, he fears this voice will sound harsh once she hears his story.

But he agreed, all but volunteered to tell her. So he has to do that.

So he tells her. Tells her how he was a soldier, a captain, and chasing after gold, and how for gold he agreed to do what was asked of him. That he agreed to kill a man, because it seemed a quick and easy way to gain, money and a better position, things he had once and lost due to his own foolishness. He tells her of the ambush by the road and of the carriage, and of signals being given and blades being drawn, and everything spurring into motion. He tells her of the voices from the carriage, high-pitched voices, _children’s_ voices, and of having not been told that, having not agreed on _that_. He tells her of one moment of indecision, because it was their lives or his own and his men’s, but he had not given his men much thought, more to his own survival, that one horrible moment of indecision, because by the time he made a decision it had already been too late, and how everything went wrong afterwards. And immediately corrects himself, because it had gone wrong long _before_. And how the blood is on his hands because he was the one who had given his men the order.

He tells her how in the end he had run away, of nameless taverns and countless pints of ale. He tells her of the Grey Warden, and how close he had been to being given a chance for another life – and how he had grasped at it – and how the Grey Warden died, killed by darkspawn, giving his life for _his_. How it did not seem right that the good man should die and he should live. How he took the Warden’s name and kept trying to do some good to somehow keep the memory of the real Warden alive, and how he used that name as a shield and how used the guilt as a sword to protect him from _himself_.

How he joined the Inquisition and fought for them, and how he heard one of his men was to be executed, and how he could not let that happen because the order had been his.

* * *

 

She listens to him, and long buried but still not forgotten images of the past float to the surface, and once more she sees the castle burning, and she feels that overwhelming feeling of guilt for being the only one to have escaped alive. The memory of her father – the spirit – the _vision_ in the old temple of Andraste told her it was time to let go, and she tried to. She thought she did. But she has only looked away, and deep down she knows she had failed, failed her parents, her nephew, her sister-in-law.

But now everything comes back to her with painful clarity. It had not been him, she knows, but it seems similar enough, it _is_ similar enough, and she despises him, loathes him, _hates_ him for bringing those memories back. Suddenly it does not matter that the Inquisitor vouches for this man, nothing matters but the memory of Highever and the story of Thom Rainier’s past still ringing in her ears.

But she has conscripted others, whose crimes were no smaller than his, so why not him, too? What difference does it make? And he might die in the Joining... She stops this train of thoughts abruptly, horrified by them.

Rainier is looking at her expectantly, awaiting her decision. “Lady Cousland?” he asks tentatively.

She realises that he is afraid she will refuse him. She can see in his eyes that his wish to atone is honest. That he needs it. That he will give all he can to do that.

But the memories that have floated back into her thoughts are too vivid, and she cannot be indifferent, cannot be just. Because it hits too close to home, and the scar in her heart reopens to a wound and bleeds all over her thoughts, drowning the reason down, and she knows she will have to pay attention every time she will have to speak his name, not to make it sound like an accusation.

But another part of her, the part of her that has kept her sane through all the years, the part of her that still can see good in people, than wants to look for it, that part sees his remorse. And perhaps it is that part that makes her curios just how much a man can change.

She does not know him, and it had not been him. But suddenly there is this question burning in her mind like a fewer, the question which she cannot even put into words, and suddenly it seems very important that she knew the answer.

* * *

 

He waits as she keeps pacing across the small room, her arms crossed at her chest, her feet quiet on the stone floor. Waits for her answer. Waits for her judgement.

“The Inquisitor wants it settled formally, right?” she asks, watchful, keen, observant. Her voice sounding different.

He nods. To his utter surprise, no judgement comes.

“So be it.” She goes to the door and opens it, so that the people out in the hall will hear what she says. “I hereby conscript you to join the Grey Wardens, Thom Rainier,” she says, and her voice is calm and soft, almost gentle even when she speaks his name.

His heart slows down and for a moment altogether stops when he realises that she has spoken his name as if it was just a name, not an accusation.


	2. Chapter 2

At first, he thought she had fair hair, it looked like that in the candlelight. But once they left Skyhold to start the journey to Ferelden, he notices her hair is white. Her face suggests that she is younger than him, but deep in her eyes there is tiredness; those are not the eyes of a young girl, those are the eyes of a woman who has seen too much of what should have never been seen. The Inquisitor’s eyes had a similar look to them, by the end.

Tentatively, not wishing to pry, he asks Constable Howe about it one evening when they are resting after a whole day of marching. Nathaniel Howe is sitting on the ground, legs crossed at the ankles, with a dagger in his hand and a small pile of twigs beside him – he is carving arrows.

“Everyone has a past,” Howe says, and Thom has an uncanny feeling that the Constable knows about his, which probably is true, which would make sense. Howe’s hands stops moving and he glances up, the look in his eyes unreadable in the gloom. “Ask her, if you’re curious. Maybe she will even tell you.” The reflections of the fire gleam in the Constable’s eyes, and for a moment they look unsettling. “You’ve told her yours, after all.”

Thom knits his eyebrows. “You know.” It is not a question.

“Yes.” Constable Howe bows over his arrows again. “I know of hers, too. We have what you’d call a history.” But no more details follow, and Howe leans over his work again.

The Commander is standing further away, at the edge of the precipice, looking at the valley stretching out towards the ragged snowy peaks of the Frostback Mountains. She notices his footsteps and knows they are not Howe’s, but only a slightest movement of her head indicates she is aware of his presence.

“Commander.” She is not looking at him, but still he bows his head briefly in respect.

She raises her hand, makes a sweeping gesture in the air. “Welcome to Ferelden, Thom Rainier.” There is something peculiar in the way she says his name, her calm voice going just a little softer over those three syllables.

He has to admit the effect is not unpleasant. “You are very pensive,” he remarks.

The moon is bright, so he notices a brief, mirthless smile crossing her lips. “Some would say melancholic.”

“It looks like sorrow to me.” He knows. Sorrow, deep regret, ah, yes, he knows.

She turns to him, her eyebrows arching. Tries to look at him closely in the gloom. “You would know, wouldn’t you?” she asks pointedly. Then she sighs. “Wardens get the privilege of having their past annulled. You should get no less.”

He shakes his head. “You can’t learn if you don’t remember.”

Her eyes narrow a little as she focuses, as if she was trying to see inside his soul. “You would know about that too, wouldn’t you?” She closes her eyes briefly, shakes her head. “Now, enough of this.” Her voice sounds sharper. Commanding. “About that question you didn’t ask: Wardens have no past.” She smiles, a lopsided smile. “To each his own burden, Thom Rainier. And mine is mine alone to bear, not yours.” She turns away from him and back to the dark vista before her, but does not tell him to go away.

Still, he does, knowing his company is tolerated, not wanted. He sits the first watch as Howe falls asleep. Sits by the fire, listening to the noises of the night in the wilderness, and from time to time he glances over at lady Cousland. In the moonlight, with her silver armour and white hair and pale skin, she looks like a statue carved of ice.

She is like glass, he thinks, strong but there is a point where she is very brittle. He knows. He knows because it is the same with him, and he can recognise something terrible must have happened in her past which made her as she is. Strong but brittle. Memories like ice that seems unable to thaw.

He knows his memories should never thaw, because he does not quite trust himself to be able to be a good man without them. Not yet. Perhaps not ever. But he does not think that is the case with her.

Still, there is _something_ there. He knows. It seems almost uncanny how one broken soul can always recognise another. Easily explained, too, he thinks, because you know from personal experience where to look for the cracks.

* * *

 

“What do you know of the Wardens?” she asks one evening, when she is sitting the last watch, in the small hours of the morning before the sky begins to lighten, the hours of nightmares and dreams, when you can hears the wheels of the world moving as it turns into another day.

Thom Rainier is sitting beside her, looking into the fire. At her question he sighs, then looks up. “Very little, I’m afraid.”

Pensively, she nods. “You told me of your past. So it seems fair that I should tell you of your future. Truth for truth, Thom Rainier,” she says, looking into his eyes.

“That’s a welcome change.” His lips move, very briefly, in what could be a faintest smile. A bitter one, though.

“Contrary to the popular belief, Warden’s are not immune to the taint. We accept it.”

“So the darkspawn blood...” he breaks off, somehow horrified by the thought.

“We drink it,” she confirms, unmoved. Maker her witness, she had enough time to get used to the thought. “Darkspawn blood, a drop of an archdemon’s blood. Those who live...” she pauses, looking for words, wondering how to explain to him what Duncan never mentioned to her because there was no time. She realises there are no good words, either. “The taint flows in our veins, and eventually we slowly succumb to it. So those who are not lucky enough to die fighting must go into the Deep Roads for their last battle. Alone. Fighting until darkspawn kill them.” She pauses, watches Rainier’s face. This is, she thinks, a man who does not fear death, because he fears life much more. “It’s called the Calling.”

Surprisingly, a crooked smile appears on his lips. “I knew it couldn’t be all heroism and glory. I wished it was, but part of me always knew, I guess.”

She turns to the fire, trying not to pay attention to Rainier’s gaze, focused on her. “Perhaps it used to be, once.”

“That’s not what people tell of you, my lady,” he says quietly, his rough voice almost soft, as if she was one of those Warden legends he kept conjuring to become a different man. “Ah, I apologise, Commander, it’s...”

“It’s all right.” She forces herself to offer him a kind look, because it would not be right to repay courtesy with coarseness. “I really don’t mind being called that.”

“Thank you, my lady. For your honesty.”

She looks up at him, her lips pressing together into a thin, hard line. “Do not misunderstand me, Thom Rainier. I’m not offering you a choice.”

He nods, accepting. “I made my choice when Warden Blackwall died, and when I joined the Inquisition, and when I agreed with the Inquisitor’s judgement.” His face is solemn, determined. “This _is_ my choice, my lady,” he adds, quietly, but with force.

She holds his gaze, trying to look deeper, right into his soul. “Then so be it, and may the Maker have mercy on us both.”

A sad, bitter smile twist his lips. “Sometimes I think there is no greater punishment than the Maker’s mercy.”

“Yes,” she says, more to herself than to him, thinking of her own complicated feelings on the matter, on _him_. “Perhaps you are right.” Thinking of how Fergus made it alive through the war. Thinking how much this man sitting right before her seems to want to atone, and how he seems genuine in that. Thinking that her father had taught her better than what she has to strain so much to stop herself from doing on every step of this road. “Or perhaps it is the only way. Baptism of fire.”

“Fire?” Nathaniel grumbles, moving on his bedroll, then wiping at his eyes, trying to chase the sleep away. “Can’t it be wine, for a change, just once?” he adds, with a quiet chuckle.

They laugh with him, too. But when she looks at Thom Rainier and finds him looking at her, she knows their laughter is a mask, and that their conversation is a secret to remain between them. And she feels anger gnawing at her mind, because she did not want to have anything to do with this man, and now they share a secret, a first tentative thread that binds them.


	3. Chapter 3

Nathaniel is the one to recite the customary phrase, his voice deep and solemn, and the words sound ominous, casting shadows across the room just as the fire is casting trembling patches of light.

She reaches for the cup, her hands oddly steady. “From this moment forth, Thom Rainier, you are a Grey Warden.”

He steps forward, towards her, and there is a strange expression on his face, hope, because that is what he wanted for a very long time, and something akin to fear, because he had not expected this to be that grim.

She looks into the cup, at the blood gleaming dark red in the gloom. He might die in the Joining, she thinks suddenly, he might die, and for a moment she cherishes the thought, and the next moment she closes her eyes tightly and inhales, a deep breath, to let air fill her lungs and thoughts and chase away the spite. When she reopens her eyes he is looking at her, his gaze a query, but she waits another moment before handing him the cup, waits for that dark wish to dissolve, because if she hands him the cup now she will give him his death, she is certain of it, and that would be a terrible thing to do.

Justice is one thing, but this is another matter altogether. To each his own burden, she thinks, and I cannot allow mine to cloud my judgement of you, Thom Rainier.

Calmer now, she hands him the cup, their fingers brushing lightly in passing, and she is surprised by how warm his palms are, how _human_. She knows that, of course, knows that is precisely what it means to be human – or elven or dwarven or anything else – that it is basically what it means to be a feeling, thinking being, that they can be the worst criminals and the greatest of heroes, that what they are is the ability to _choose_.

He has chosen, and now he raises the cup to his lips and drinks, without hesitation.

He drinks, and he lives, and she is determined to see that as a sign from the Maker, a sign that she has made the right choice, a sign that Thom Rainier deserves his atonement. A harsh reminder that it is not her right to judge him. But it is not so easy to let go, so she still judges him, despite all. Because of it all. It had not been her, it had not been him, it is not about her and him, to each their own burden, to each their own past.

It _is_ about _her_ and _him_ , everything confused and tangled, a labyrinth, a maze of mirrors, the darkest and most winding paths of the Deep Roads. It must be about _her_ and _him_ , because each time she looks at him she cannot breathe, and once she can every inhale and exhale burns like Highever did.

* * *

 

In Amaranthine, things are easier. How ironic, she thinks. How fitting. This is where she had faced her past before, when she had seen it in Nathaniel’s face, and in the end had finally made peace with it – or so it seemed. Now she is no longer certain, not when long-forgotten dreams keep waking her up at night, again. Not when, while they were still on the road, she woke from a nightmare to a worried face of Thom Rainier leaning over her, his voice asking ‘My lady?’ gently and with concern. ‘Darkspawn dreams,’ she answered him back then, snapped at him, angry at him for his care and at herself, for her vulnerability and for her spite. She could see in his eyes that he knew she lied to him, but never asked, just politely withdrew and left her alone. Came back a moment later with a flask of moonshine he had got in one the villages they had passed through, and she was angry at herself for accepting it. She remembers how it tasted bitter in her mouth, bitter like her lie and like his past alike.

Despite everything, she is glad to be home. She is thankful for Sigrun’s enthusiastic chatter and for Velanna’s constant grumping, for Reuel’s kind words, even for Oghren’s bawdy jokes. For the mad joy with which Griffin greets her – he is her second mabari, one of Laurel’s puppies, now all grown and a formidable hound, and a closest tie to home she has here with her, having given the family sword back to her brother.

She is glad for her bed, not as soft as the Orlesian beds she has slept in, but comfortable enough and her own, and still not half as hard as life. Glad to be back in her office among piles of letters, with Varel’s sensible advice always at hand. Glad to be back in the little room she, Velanna and Reuel use for making herbal brews and ointments. Glad to have her hands full of work again, because it means she can stop thinking of the past and of Thom Rainier.

But she watches; oh, yes, she watches. And what she sees only confuses her further. She sees him in the yard, sitting beside Dworkin, a carving knife in his hands, working on a children’s toy. She sees his room and how it is a constant mess because he works there, too, he either trains or works, keeping his hands busy all the time. Because it helps not to think, ah, yes, she knows that well.

She sees others approaching him, as they would any fellow Warden. In time, he might even find friendships here.

Velanna snaps at him, but she snaps at everyone. Sigrun talks to him and they find a common ground quite quickly, although neither talks much of their past, but Sigrun was born in Dust Town and grew up there, and she can guess what deeds his past contains, and she has no need to ask. Varel and Garevel and the soldiers accept him quickly and without questions, and it seems he gets on with them well enough. Oghren tries to talk him into a drinking contest, to no avail, but they do drink together and exchange stories, and Sigrun mentions sometimes how disgusting they both are, but she always laughs then, and Velanna scoffs, so there is no doubt what kind of stories they share.

Nathaniel... Nathaniel knows, has knows since Skyhold, and has his own issues with Rainier. But somehow they seems to get along, albeit grudgingly. But they fight side by side, eat and drink together, and have travelled together, and all those things can form bonds between even the most reluctant people. And Nathaniel is the most down-to-earth, sensible person she knows, and he relies on his reason, and that is why he does not quite shun the idea of befriending Rainier away.

As for Reuel, Rainier seems to be avoiding the mage. Reuel unsettles him; the elderly mage is quiet and observant and smart, but most importantly he is from _Jader_ , from _Orlais_ , knew Warden Blackwall, the real one, has heard of captain Rainier, so Warden Rainier fears him. But Reuel never says anything, until one day he approaches their newest recruit and they exchange a few words, and then Reuel talks quietly with that look on his wrinkled face which he always has when he is saying something that is kind and wise – she is too far away to overhear anything, but she sees Rainier snap at the mage, and quietly Reuel walks away, his eyes full of pity. And she sees Thom Rainier trying to go back to the toy he was carving before that talk, but his hands shake so badly that all he manages to achieve is another cut across the scarred canvas of his palms.

And then she momentarily feels terrible rage – bitter, irrational – raising inside her when she sees Griffin, _her own_ mabari, trotting over to Rainier and licking the gash on his palm, and Rainier smiles and pats Griffin’s head. And then she stops, watching that smile, its piercing sadness. Because of them all Griffin is the only one that truly accepts him without any reservations.

As she walks by, she whistles at her hound, and immediately Griffin leaps to her side. Rainier watches them, crumbled leftovers of the smile still on his face.

“They say mabari hounds are very smart,” he remarks.

“Sometimes I think Griffin is not a very smart one,” she says, wishing to hurt him even if she knows she has no right, but Maker, is it _her_ hound, and she feels betrayed, foolish as it is. She sighs, lets the anger pass, reaches into the pouch at her belt for a box of elfroot ointment and tosses it to Rainier. There are questions in his eyes, but he does not ask them, which is good, because if he did, she would have to lie. “And sometimes I think he’s twice as smart as all of them together.”


	4. Chapter 4

The Wardens accept him, some less, some more reluctantly. But they all treat him as they would any other stranger, a man they do not know, but their fellow Warden.

There is also the mage, Reuel Caron... The mage from Jader, from _Orlais_ , the mage who knew the real Blackwall. Thom had been trying to avoid him, but Reuel finally approached him, with nothing but kind words of assurance and encouragement, which Thom was not ready to accept. Not ready to hear how he lived up to who Warden Blackwall had been. Definitely not ready to hear he was a better Warden than Blackwall had been. After that talk, he started avoiding the mage even more, but every now and then he catches Reuel’s gaze and turns away from the kindness an sympathy in the mage’s eyes. It is strange and too complicated to find out that the very person he feared most is the first to accept him without hesitation.

Only Constable Howe keeps watching him, and does not even try to hide it. Thom has to admit Howe is one of the most straightforward, honest men he has ever met. Not that the knowledge helps to chase away that strange feeling... The thing is, he does not think the Constable distrusts him; on the contrary.

So one day he decides to set the matters straight. “You are watching me,” he says to the Constable when they are both in the yard, sharpening their blades.

“Yes.” Howe looks at him, unsmiling, as usually. “I’m curious.”

“Curious?”

“Curious how much a man can change.” Howe looks up from his work, a dagger in his hand, and the overall effect is somehow disconcerting. “Wondering who you really are.”

Thom looks away, suppressing a sigh. “I wish I knew that.”

“She is watching you, too.”

“Lady Cousland?” In truth, he knows that. Guesses, at least. If he was in her place, he would definitely watch himself.

Howe nods. “Yes.”

“Curiosity?” He risks an educated guess. It feels like that, the way she looks at him – curiosity. But her curiosity is gentle, like her voice, as if she was checking on his progress rather than doubting his struggles to become a better man. And he finds himself trying even harder, not to disappoint her curiosity.

“It’s more complex than that.”

“What do you mean?”

Nathaniel Howe smiles, a tight, secretive smile, a little bit eerily. “Why don’t you ask her?” he suggests.

There is something odd in the Constable’s question, something darker. Something that does not fit lady Cousland – the only dark thing about her is her past, and what she had to go through during the Blight and later, the only darkness in her are marks that the world left on her, and she is stained glass now, still luminous – and that peculiar something does not fit lady Cousland so much that Thom dismisses it.

* * *

 

The Vigil is busy with trade and training soldiers, and sometimes also petitioners coming to ask an audience with their Arlessa. But nothing makes a place busy like a presence of a child, and when Nathaniel Howe’s sister visits, bringing her children with her, the Keep becomes a brighter place, full of laughter, and one has to be extra careful not to bump into a curious boy or his mabari pup, which follows the boy everywhere.

Delilah Howe’s daughter, Emer, named after lady Cousland, is more shy than her brother, and does not run around the Keep, chatting merrily with everyone. She stays with her mother or uncle, or sometimes walks up to Reuel, calls him ‘Grandpa’ and asks for some magic, and Reuel is all too happy to oblige, conjuring tiny brilliant fireworks that flash around the girl’s head like a crown of flowers.

The first time she sneaks out into the yard to watch him work, Thom is surprised, uncomfortable, because her sweet little face brings back too many memories, all of them painful, some of them shameful. But she smiles at him shyly, asks about his work.

By the next day, when he begins working on a toy for her – a little griffin that would flap its wings when she would pull the string – she starts calling him ‘uncle Thom’, and the name fits him like a boot that is too small – hurts and chafes and makes him uncomfortable. But she keeps returning, Griffin trailing after her, and it becomes a part of the Keep’s landscape: a man working on a wooden toy, a mabari dozing off at his side, and a little girl looking over his shoulder with a wide smile of anticipation on her rosy face. A quiet, peaceful picture, and over time the name the girl gives him stops being that painful, until one day it coaxes a smile out of him, a smile surprised as much as Thom is himself by how good the name sounds.

“I’ve never thought I would see something like that,” Nathaniel Howe says quietly one day, after sending his niece off into the Keep for supper. “I think,” Howe adds pensively, his keen, piercing eyes focused on Thom, “I think I understand now. I learned what I wanted to.” Then, slowly, the Constable moves his hand forward. “From now on, I’ll no longer be watching you, Warden Rainier.”

Thom hesitantly grasps the Constable’s hand. “Thank you, Constable, I guess?” he asks, the question accompanied by a short, uneasy laugh.

Briefly, Nathaniel Howe smiles. “And from now on, it’s Nathaniel. And I think an occasion like this needs a fine amount of an even finer ale.”

They drink and talk a little, not like a Warden and his superior but like comrades in arms, and Thom finds out he is not certain how to deal with acceptance. But learning this way seems to be a far less painful process that he thought.


	5. Chapter 5

The Wardens are drinking and laughing down in the hall, as are all people across the country. That day, eleven years ago, the Fifth Blight was brought to an end.

Lady Cousland drinks only a little – the glass often close to her lips, but she is just sipping the wine, pretending to drink. She puts on quite a show of being the inspiring leader, content with her old victory, but deep down he can sense melancholy. It resonates with his sorrow, similarly to how the taint in their veins sings together, creating that illusion of brotherhood... Or maybe it is not _just_ an illusion, but a way to transform reality. He would know.

There are many questions about the Blight he would like to ask, but those who have seen it would rather forget, and there is no one to give him answers. And there are question about lady Cousland’s past, but she never mentions anything, and he respects her silence.

He watches her slip away from the festivities, Nathaniel covering for her departure with a dry joke that brings everyone’s attention off her, and the next moment she is gone, but they are laughing and one takes notice. Thom does. He watches her and wonders what thoughts and memories are hiding under her white hair.

Suddenly tired of ale and song, he bids everyone goodnight and leaves the hall, taking a small bottle of mead. He was not there during the Blight, nor during the victory, and he feels awkward celebrating something he had no part in.

Seeking peace, he climbs the stair up to the battlements. But as he opens the door, she spots a lonely figure standing there, and recognises her white hair; in the moonlight, it looks like a nimbus of glory over her head.

He approaches her, quietly enough not to disturb her, but loudly enough that she could notice his presence. And dismiss him, should she want solitude, or simply if she did not wish _his_ company.

“You’re not celebrating with the others,” he remarks softly.

“I was there, Thom Rainier.” Her eyes are set on the horizon, away from Reuel’s fireworks casting lights across their faces. Something in lady Cousland, perhaps her mood, makes that supposedly merry display look eerie. “I had to make all the hard decisions.” Her lips twist in a bitter smile, but her eyes are pained. “So forgive me if I don’t know how to celebrate _that_.”

“I am sorry, my lady.” He wishes to ease her burden somehow, but he cannot. And even if he could, she would never let him. “I will leave you alone, if you’d rather...”

She turns to him fully, bright eyes focused and alert. “No chance for a flask of moonshine?” she asks.

He laughs, shortly, quietly, but it is surprise at her request rather than amusement. “Good medicine tasting bitter?”

To his astonishment, she smiles briefly. “Unladylike, I know.”

“Well, a little. But no, I have none, my lady.” He comes closer, sets a small bottle on the stone wall. “I have some mead, though.”

She nods. “Will do. You paid your toll, so you can stay.”

From the way she speaks to him, more openly than usually, he guesses she must have had more wine than he thought. Or maybe she is just very exhausted and the wine worked more quickly.

She waits for him to open the flask, takes a sip, passes him the bottle. He does not even really drink, barely enough to wet his lips. Someone will have to see her safely to her room, after all. He can get a little drunk himself some other time.

“Are you thinking about the battle, my lady?” he asks eventually, when the silence begins getting even more uncomfortable than usually.

“Not quite.” She sighs. “About Loghain.”

Ah. He knows of Loghain. Would have to be blind not to see some parallels, at least. “Do I remind you of him?”

She snorts quietly. “Does brooding qualify?” But she quickly becomes serious again. “You and Loghain... It’s not a good comparison.” She takes another sip of mead. “An inverted mirror image, if anything.” And another. “He was no one, then a hero, and then a villain, a traitor. Whereas you...”

“I was no one,” he supplies. “Then became a traitor, and a...”

“Yes,” she interrupts in a voice soft from all the mead, just before he can say ‘murderer’. “But now...” she lets the sentence hover in the air unfinished. A gateway to possibilities, and one of them is that he might have started a traitor but ended up a hero, inverted mirror image, she herself suggested that because he would never dare to.

There is one question nagging at his mind, and he has to ask. She recruited _him_ , after all, even though she knew his story.

“But you recruited him. Loghain.” Despite the form, his words are a query.

“Yes.”

“So that he could redeem himself?”

“Ah.” She gulps down the rest of the mead. “Unlike you, Thom Rainier, Loghain never saw the error of his ways. Even at the end, when he came to respect me, he never regretted,” she says, and her words are like mead, the less bitter medicine. Sweet, even. Unexpected and surprising, but sweet.

* * *

 

She can see the brief flash of something akin to hope in his eyes. If he only knew that she did not finish that sentence not because she wanted to suggest he was a hero, but because she _could not_ say _that_ aloud. How she could not say that he is not Loghain, that if anything, he would be Rendon Howe, or one of his men – what is the difference? She did not, does not want to admit that he is different now, that he is a Warden, a knight, and yes, a hero. Because it cannot be.

Each heart is like the Deep Roads, she thinks suddenly, a tangled maze of tunnels, some of them leading up to the light and some of them going down into the darkness, and one has to choose direction. But sometimes it is difficult to choose the right way, and one can stumble and fall down into a lower tunnel, or can meet a brave scout who can show the way out. Even if one has a map, it can be right or wrong. But in the end, it is always down to choices.

For a moment, the analogy allows her to see Rainier as he is: a Grey Warden, fighting his way up through darkspawn littering the tunnels. The thought does not bring any enlightenment, because she _knows_ all that, but there is a personal note to her judgement, and she cannot be fair to him, and that is why she tries so hard to be impartial – because she fears she will never be.

“I conscripted Loghain because he used to be a hero, before he became a traitor. Because without him, there would be no Ferelden to speak of. That’s not something you can just forget.” Why does she even tell him that? Of what interest is that to him? Ah, but of course it is. “I couldn’t kill him, and I couldn’t let him live, so I let him sacrifice himself.”

Slowly, a smile blooms on his lips, slightly bitter but wise with the wisdom of tragedy and sorrow and guilt. And hued with just a hint of grim amusement. “Is that why you conscripted me, my lady? Because my death would have solved nothing and I shouldn’t be allowed to live, so you let me sacrifice myself?”

She looks deeply into his eyes. His question is serious. And he thinks that the answer he suggested is true, but does not hold that against her. Against himself, if anything, if the self-loathing she sees in his eyes is any clue. For the first time, she wonders if he is not his own harshest, most-demanding judge. ‘May you become a good man.’ She wonders if _that_ is not his punishment, and how fitting it would be.

“No,” she answers slowly. What he said is partly true, that is what she thought of his life and death. What she still thinks, more often than not. That, and there was also her curiosity. But she agreed to make him a Warden for one specific reason, the same that sparked her peculiar interest. “I conscripted you, Thom Rainier, because you had already sacrificed yourself.”

There is no sudden revelation, so sudden change of her mind. But the thought settles at the bottom of her heart like a heavy stone falling into a deep lake or river. And this one even has a body tied to it.


	6. Chapter 6

She still feels offended whenever her mabari barks happily at seeing Rainier. But when Griffin runs to him, and they two play at fighting, or whenever Griffin just follows Rainier around when having nothing better to do because she is in her busy doing her Commander of the Grey and Arlessa duties, there is a smile on Rainier’s face which never shows up there otherwise. It is small, nothing obvious, well hidden between his whiskers and beard, but she is observant and she notices how the muscles in his cheeks work differently when he smiles. A peaceful smile. And for some reason, she feels that despite all it would be wrong to deprive him of it. Because no matter how hard he tries to hide his emotions, she has keen sight and knows the silent language of faces and eyes, and she knows that except for those rare moments, he is never at peace.

She tries to treat him like she would any Warden, because that is what is expected of her. By the Maker, she has recruited Loghain, _Loghain_ , of all people, and then has recruited Velanna knowing her misdeeds first hand, she has recruited them because she needed them and in the end it turned out they were not evil, but just had erred, and she could understand Velanna, and that scared her. But sometimes when she looks at Rainier she sees her nephew Oren’s face frozen into a mask of fear, and she has to dig her fingers into the skin of her palm, sometimes deeply enough to draw blood, all to keep her voice calm and even.

But other times she can seen the local children, most of whom have seen nothing but poverty because Ferelden has been struggling ever since the Blight, she sees the local children smiling at the wooden toys Rainier makes for them, and it feels as if she had two hearts. One despises him for the man he was. One admires him for the man he is. And no matter how hard she is trying, she cannot figure out a way to put the two together.

It is not her right to judge him but she does anyway, because it hit too close to home, because it had been similar enough with him. She judges the man he used to be.

But more importantly, she watches the man he is now, and judges him as he is. For some reason, she is certain he will provide her the answers she seeks, even though she does not quite know the questions yet.

* * *

 

When a letter arrives from Weisshaupt, ordering them to investigate the site where the Architect’s lair had been, _again_ , she curses so vilely and colourfully that Rainier looks at her in surprise, because it is difficult to outdo him in that department, but she manages to do so. Nathaniel laughs at her, and surprisingly Rainier joins him and briefly laughs, too, and she is astonished by the way it sounds. Fitting. Normal. He is now a man who can laugh and makes toys for children, and then she tries to imagine what he had felt back then, before he ran, and to her utter shock what she feels for him is pity.

He was a captain and his superior asked a favour, and yes, someone else would have done it for gold if he refused, but there are always those who refuse and those who agree. But, back then, he had not known all the details. And then he had learnt, and it was ‘damned if you do damned if you don’t’, but there are always some who do and are damned, and others who do not and are damned but still saved. And he had done, and thus had damned himself, but as she looks at him now she knows that no one will ever judge him more harshly that he judges himself over and over again.

And she cannot help thinking that nothing would have been a harsher punishment than this, nothing will ever be a harsher punishment for him than having to live with himself. She recalls a tale her father had once told her, of mages and knights and ladies and possibly Wardens, she does not remember the details. But she remembers when at some point in the story someone – an old woman, a herbalist or perhaps a hedge witch, whose son was killed, if she remembers correctly – looked at the villain and told him calmly: ‘May you become a good man,’ and turned and walked away. But the spell worked, and he became a good man, and understood what he had done, and no curse would have caused him that much pain.

She does not remember how the story ended. But when she looks at Rainier, she thinks she knows. And again she wonders briefly whether he is not judging himself twice as harshly as she judges him.

* * *

 

It first occurs to her in the Deep Roads, after a brief battle with darkspawn, when he shields her with his own body as he has done many times already, and gets wounded so seriously he almost loses his sword arm. An arrow whistles past them and the last darkspawn falls dead, and she immediately calls for Velanna.

The elven healer makes her magic, and Rainier’s shoulder momentarily disappears under a soft blue glow. Velanna concentrates. “There’s are still some minor wounds.”

“Elfroot will be enough for those, my lady,” Rainier says. “Thank you.”

“Doing my job, just as you’re doing yours, shem,” Velanna snorts. “Howe, sit down before you bleed to death from that slash across your thigh!” she barks, then walks over to Nathaniel. “And you, Commander, can help our heroic warrior with the elfroot,” Velanna suggests, glancing back over her shoulder.

“Maker, she doesn’t like me, does she?” Rainier asks, unbuckling the straps of his armour.

“She just doesn’t know how to handle gratitude,” she explains softly. Which brings her mind to a serious question: does _she_ know how to do that?

Methodically, she helps him with the armour, waits for him to shed his tunic. His body is a map of scars; she has seen him bare-chested before, but this always comes as a surprise. She looks over his back and chest; a bruise here, a bruise there, nothing serious. And a fresh, long deep cut on his shoulder. She applies elfroot carefully, watches the potions work its magic as the wound closes and heals until it is no more than a fresh scar. He had saved her before, but it is the first serious wound he has taken for her. Can _she_ handle gratitude?

She puts her hand on his shoulder, softly brushes her thumb along the still red and no doubt sore flesh. “It will leave a scar,” she says quietly.

“Probably.”

She is no longer certain if they are speaking about his wound. Runs her thumb along the scar again, and suddenly he tenses, holds very still under her touch. “Thank you,” she says at last. “For saving my life.”

He musters a tight smile. “Just doing my job.”

“It seems someone can’t handle the gratitude.” She forces herself to make this a more light-hearted comment, as she would make to anyone else but him. The muscles of his jaw tense briefly, and she realises she has hit too close to home.

“Not very well,” he admits at last, in a rough, strangled whisper.

She has no other words to offer to him. But he saved her life, so she briefly puts her palm over the scar, ever so gently, to let him know she _is_ grateful. She has no idea how to do that otherwise, because it seems she cannot handle gratitude quite as well as she thought.


	7. Chapter 7

Fergus’ visit is a ray of light in the grey of everyday duties and, surprisingly, instead of making the memories clearer he makes it easier to forget everything else for a moment. So she does, and other Wardens who know her already just smile at her out of friendship or just kindness. But every time Rainier looks at her, there is amazement in his eyes, as if he was puzzled she knows how to laugh, and then there is a smile, so soft it is barely there on his lips, but she can glimpse it in his eyes, a deeper contentment, as if he saw something truly bright and good. For some reason, it makes her chest tighten, this quiet gladness of his at seeing her happy.

She tells Fergus nothing, because it is enough that she is reliving all the memories and he does not have to. And also because whoever Thom Rainier was he is a Warden now, and thus deserves the same courtesy every other Warden gets: of having no past. Fergus, as most people, knows nothing of the other Wardens’ pasts. But he is his brother and he knows of hers, so he can guess why they are called Grey Wardens, not White.

She sees him talking with Rainier a few times, just as he talks to every other Warden, simple, polite conversations, which later may or may not turn into a grudging friendship, like with Nathaniel, or into just the drinking-and-sharing-stories kind of acquaintance, like with Sigrun and Oghren.

“Where did you find him?” Fergus asks one evening, briefly glancing over to the table where Thom Rainier is drinking with Nathaniel and Oghren, trying not to spit when he suddenly laughs at some development in Sigrun’s tale. There is nothing grudging in his voice, just a plain indication of a possible future friendship, but still she cannot tell him.

“Orlais.” She can tell that much. “He was a soldier.”

“Ah.” Fergus inquiries no further; he has been to war, he knows about soldiering. He knows different things happen on the battlefield and beyond it. Better to leave him with his guesses.

“He wanted to join.” That is true; the Inquisitor had decided that, but when she spoke with Rainier, he said he wanted to join, and gave her his reasons for it.

“He’s a good man,” Fergus notes, looking at her, and the words ‘he would be good for you’ hover in the air, even though they remain unsaid.

“He is,” she says, in the same calm and soft voice she so often uses when speaking Thom Rainier’s name. Utterly calm and a little too soft because she has to concentrate with all her might not to make an accusation out of it, for she has no right to do so.

* * *

 

She let Nathaniel persuade her to join them, because how could she not if even Velanna agreed, but she regrets it now. Nathaniel had his own issues with Rainier, but he got over them. Maybe because, like Fergus, he has not seen it all. She has, from the bitter beginning to the very end.

“You look almost like a dwarf, with that beard,” Sigrun says, winking at Rainier, her cheeks red from the ale and the warmth of the room.

“Thank you, my lady,” he responds, and flourishes her as much of a courtly bow as he can while sitting.

Sigrun is ecstatic. “Ahh, I could get used to that.”

Rainier smiles a little; Sigrun has that effect on most people, when she is not being sarcastic, and now she is not.

“If you find my beard so appealing, my lady, should you not rather...” Apparently, he is a tad deeper in his cups than usually. Or perhaps he has just got used to the life in Vigil’s Keep and the company of other Wardens.

“What, go pester Oghren?” Sigrun laughs. “Not if he was the last dwarf in Thedas!”

Even she cannot help but smile a little; Oghren has grown an impressive beard over the years, and that would be considered a very attractive trait by most dwarven women, but he is still... well, Oghren. But her smile is fleeting.

Sigrun notices that, then nudges Rainier’s elbow. “You should perhaps go flirt with our Commander instead. Maybe she would smile at all the ‘my ladies’, too,” Sigrun whispers in what she no doubt thinks in a very discreet voice.

Rainier looks uncomfortable, and keeps his eyes low, not looking at _her_ , not to let her know what Sigrun has just said. Hoping she has not heard.

Nathaniel speaks before she can. “Sigrun,” he mouths, a note of warning in his voice.

Sigrun shakes her head. “Well, ser Grump, some people actually like to enjoy life while they have one. And between you and him and our Commander, we’re soon going to turn from Grey Wardens into Grim Wardens.”

Reuel laughs out at that, a merry, contagious laughter, and Sigrun and Oghren follow, and soon Nathaniel joins them, and even Velanna’s lips crook up in a brief smile. His laughter is sincere, but she knows the elderly mage well by now, and knows his laughter is a curtain for her and Thom Rainier to hide behind, because Reuel knows their past, too, and understands that Sigrun’s attempt at joking was far from amusing for them both.

When Rainier glances up at her, just then, she is looking at him. There is something in his eyes, wistfulness, perhaps, or maybe it is just the play of light, a flash from the fireplace. She holds his gaze, forcing herself to look at him calmly and perhaps even a little friendly, and nothing more. He has been an exemplary Warden so far, and does not deserve to be led on and given false hope. He nods to her, a brief bow of his head, letting her know he understands.

But she has been lonely for very long and she can tell that he has been, too, and deep down some part of her wishes she did not know of his past. Because Fergus was right, and the man Thom Rainier is now would be good for her.

But she knows, and it changes everything, and they can only fit together like a knife and a wound stabbed with it, like memories and guilt. Except that, seeing his need to atone and her own morbid curiosity, she does no longer know who is what.


	8. Chapter 8

She is at the gate, leaning against the wall, and he almost misses her as he walks past. She clings to the wall and the deep shadows, but he notices the movement, or maybe her breath.

“My lady?”

“I’m here, Rainier.” She permits a brush of irritation into her voice. Because she feels like it, and because to do otherwise would not be treating him like any other Warden. She wonders briefly whether that means that she has finally accepted him as he is, but then she lets go of the question, too tired for it.

“I’m sorry, my lady, if you don’t want company...”

She raises a hand and it silences him instantly. For just a brief moment, she enjoys that power, then sighs, deflates, knowing deep down in her bones that it is wrong to do that, knowing that it is not what she wants. “I’m not in a mood for jesting, that’s all.” Her eyebrows arch a little as she watches him. “But you might be a suitably grim company.”

He lets out a brief laugh. “Well, Grim Wardens, indeed.”

She is surprised when her lips curl up into a smile. “Not grim enough, Warden Rainier. Try again.” For once, she is too exhausted for thinking and for all the complicated questions, and Maker, she is immensely grateful for it. For once, they are just two Wardens, and she does not have to be on her guard.

“I’m afraid I am not good company, my lady,” he admits.

She sighs, and her shoulders slump a little. “First, you don’t have to make conversation when neither of us feels like it,” she explains quietly. Patiently, too, because he is sometimes trying too hard and it is tiring for both parties.

“That’s right, laddie!” Oghren’s booming voice comes through the open window. “Talking will not make a lady happy! Make a better use of...”

“Ancestors, Oghren, just shut up, will you?!” Sigrun’s voice would be a hiss if it was not so loud.

“I’ve been married twice, lass, I know what I’m talking...”

“Oh yeah? And where are your wives now?”

She watches the look of Rainier’s face – discomfort, embarrassment. And suddenly she thinks of those unsaid words between Fergus and her, and there is only one way she can really cope with it all. She laughs. Her laughter is quiet, but heartfelt, and it eases some of the burdens rattling in her chest.

She is too exhausted, and for the first and perhaps the only time they are just Wardens now, and she has watched him and thus she knows he makes a good Warden, a good man. There are many familiar traits in him, ones she admired or loved in men that have been somehow important in her life: the kind of determination that reminds her of Duncan, kindness and courtesy alike that which Teagan has, and respect like that which Roland had bestowed upon her. And on a night like this, when she finds she cannot even enjoy her friends’ company, it would be all too easy to imagine his weight, his warmth, his hand tangled in her hair, and a soft ‘my lady’ whispered against her throat, a temporary mean to quell her solitude. And she laughs because the mere idea is absurd, all the more so for the tiny fact that if she did not know of his past, it would be understandable, maybe even sensible. If she did not know of his past, it would be possible. But she knows, and it is not, and her loneliness cannot be a factor in this, _she_ will not let it be an argument in this. And so she laughs, amused by it all in some weird way.

Rainier looks at her, surprised – and she reminds herself that he has not heard her laughing all that often. She holds his gaze and wonders whether his gratitude is all that is there, whether he is not mistaking his own loneliness – even more profound that hers – for something it is not. She knows first-hand how confusing loneliness can make things, because she has been there once. And it was a mistake, which, fortunately, hurt no one, but this, here and now, would hurt them both.

“We’re Wardens,” she reminds. “No past. But new ties that bind us, and new boundaries that should not be crossed.”

He looks at her, hesitates, says nothing. He seems grateful for her lie, even if this time he recognises it for what it is. Because it is not about them both being the Wardens, nor about her being the Commander of the Grey; no, this is about who they were _before_ the Wardens.

All she has been offering him since the very beginning is built upon a lie, down to the reason why she speaks his name the way she does, which is no sign of friendship or acceptance as he seems to think, but rather a proof of her weakness, a necessity. All a pretence, all a masquerade. And Maker, he is so very grateful for it all when it is not even real, not on her part; she knows his past and that is why it can never be real.

And yet, right there and then, laughing not at Oghren’s bawdy joke nor at Sigrun riposte but at her own inability to cope with the tricks her mind and emotions play on her, right there and then for a brief moment she thought of Thom Rainier as of just a Warden, like any other, like her. And as he bows to her and wishes her a calm night, and leaves her alone in the cool air, she wonders if that is not what he is now – a Warden. She has granted everyone else the courtesy of forgetting their past – a kindness, a necessity, a custom. With him, it is different, because even though it is not personal, it still is, somehow.

But this is the first time she actually entertains the notion that he truly is a changed man. A different man. A good Warden. A _good man_? The question squeezes the air from her lungs, leaving her gasping. She looks deeper into the yard, at the candles burning at the stone feet of the statue of Andraste.

She is not certain what to pray for, except for guidance, but she feels there is more, much more. She is not certain what to pray for, but she comes closer and lights a candle, and watches the flame flicker to life. A prayer. A doubt, burning. A tiny spark of hope.

* * *

 

She is not pretty; she might have been, once, but since then worry and sorrow have marked her face with faint cobwebs, have pressed her lips into a thin line of determination, and sometimes curl the corners of her mouth down in profound sadness. She is trying to hide it, and she smiles and even laughs sometimes, but deep down she is not a happy woman, and it shows. He can feel it, radiating from her, her anguish resonating with his.

She is not pretty; her nose, a little too long, her grey eyes, a little too big. But, Maker, they way she looks, looks right into his soul, her eyes luminous like the sky at dawn. And whenever she speaks she seems to be Andraste herself, because Maker, _her voice_. Soft and delicate and strong, soft like water, soothing tones trickling down his soul like a balm. She is not pretty but she is beautiful, and it has nothing to do with loneliness or desire, but everything to do with the darkest and the brightest parts of him, with forgetting and remembering how to live and breathe, with picking up the pieces of those different men he has been in his life and building himself from scratch all over again.

And just when he was ready to let the world convince him that Wardens were not half as honourable as he thought, their paths crossed, and she is the paragon of a Warden, not what he thought because closer to reality but still an icon, a hero. The Wardens are not called Grey without a reason, he has listened to her tales and those of her companions so he knows, but she tries to help people whenever she can, to leave the world a better place, and he could have not asked for more than to follow her orders and fight at her side. This is more than he hoped for, a chance to atone and to do Warden Blackwall’s memory justice, all that he wanted, and still more. Because they all treat him just like another Warden, and no one asks questions because a Warden’s past is his own, and even Nathaniel Howe, who knows, still offers him a kind of a grudging respect and friendship. And _she_ knows but treats him as she did not know, and speaks his name gently, as if it was just a name, and treats him as if he was a good man, and despite himself he is beginning to believe that.

“She’s an exemplary Warden,” he says one day to Nathaniel Howe.

The Constable laughs. “Just how do you manage to uphold such a romantic view of the Wardens?” Howe’s brows knit, and his tone gets back to its usual seriousness. “No, better don’t answer that.” Howe pauses. “She’s not an exemplary Warden. Too much heart for that.”

Rainier sighs, because by now he has read the historical accounts of old and has heard the tales of the latest Blight, and also of what happened in Amaranthine later, and has learned the past of the keep on Soldier’s Peak, and he knows. “I know that’s not what the Wardens are. I just refuse to stop believing that’s not what they should aspire to be.”

“Perhaps.” Howe nods pensively. “But she’s not exemplary. Too much heart to be a model Warden as they are. Had to make too many difficult decisions and choices between one bad option and another to be a paragon of a Warden as you see them.” Howe gives him a look, observant, and just a little curious. “Don’t put her on a pedestal. She never wanted all this. Leadership, saving the world. She wanted a quiet life.”

A thought forms in his mind, and he asks before he can think better of it. “But she could have that.” Something tugs at his mind and heart, something akin to regret or lost hope.“You two are friends...”

Howe laughs, without the usual hint of bitterness, just simply amused. “Maybe if I didn’t remember her as a five-years-old girl in pigtails which looked exactly like the ones my sister had. Our families were close.” Howe pauses, becomes serious again. “Don’t put her on a pedestal. Guard her, protect her. Be a friend, not a worshipper.”

Thom shakes his head. “I’m not...”

“Damn, you bloody _are_. Because she knew from the beginning and she accepted you nonetheless, that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? That’s just how she is, and it’s far more complicated than you think. So just stop that bloody nonsense and be the Warden she requires you to be.”

“I’m trying.”

A brief, warmer smile. “I see that. She does, too.” Howe pauses. “But she can’t be your redemption.”

Thom snorts. “I know that.”

“Good.” Howe’s eyes bore into his. “Because she knows that, too.”


	9. Chapter 9

The keep at Soldier’s Peak is watched over by Levi Dryden and his family, but despite that, it feels empty, like a shell, and like a shell echoes the sea, the keep echoes with traces of past glory and falls. But it is purged of all blood magic and other unholy spells, that is what Reuel assures her of, and she can feel safe here, like in Amaranthine.

Once again she regrets having to leave Nathaniel in the Vigil, because that means she has to spend more time with Rainier, something that Nathaniel usually does. Why he should get on so well with Rainier is a mystery – ah, ‘well’ is perhaps not the best word, but they do get on somehow – but usually she is just silently thankful for it, because it means she can avoid Rainier. And the more he seems to prove that he is a changed man, and changed for the better, the more she avoids him, because her eyes see it and her mind understands it but her heart cannot accept it, or maybe the other way round.

She enters the chapel, hoping to find peace there. She finds Rainier instead. He is sitting in the pew, immobile and with his eyes closed, but upon hearing her footsteps he opens his eyes and turns to greet her, getting up swiftly.

“I won’t be disturbing you, my lady...”

Her eyes fix him in place. “I didn’t know you prayed.”

He blinks, surprised by her remark. “I... I don’t think I know how.” Then a brief, crooked smile, bitter and just a little broken, but he must be certain she cannot see it. “I see I don’t strike you as a man who would know the Canticles.”

“Ah, I haven’t prayed with those for years. That’s not the only way.” She walks up to the statue of Andraste, lights a candle, going through well-known motions, soothing in their familiarity. “My own words. Thoughts. Feelings. I give what I have.”

His brow clouds and his eyes go dark with sorrow, regret and anger. “And what do I have?” His tone is mocking, helpless.

She gives him a long look before bowing over the candles again and lighting another one, just to keep her hand busy. Maker, she really does not want to give him that answer, because she would have to admit that he is a changed man, that he is a _good_ man now. But... he has saved her life, and they have shared bread, and she cannot leave him hanging, not now, not here in the chapel, of all places, not right under Andraste’s image’s stone feet.

“A battered armour,” she says quietly. “A chipped sword.” She pauses. “Scars,” she adds, and against her will her voice goes softer. “Wooden shavings.”

He watches her, surprised. “That’s... something,” he mutters, in awe. There are sparks kindling in his eyes, ones she has not seen there before... ah, no, she has, for a brief moment at the beginning of their journeys.

“Perhaps this is your task now, to pray the prayers that they cannot,” she says in a clear voice, and both the tone and the words shock her just as much as they shock him. “Perhaps your duty now is to carry the lives.”

His brows knit. “The bodies, you mean,” he corrects, hesitantly.

She shakes her head, wondering from where the words come, but suddenly she knows she has to speak them because for some reason they are right, a revelation to both him and her alike. “No. Not the bodies, Thom Rainier. The lives. Fears. Dreams. _Lives_.”

He is staring at her, dumbstruck. “It’s...”

The feeling of guilt, that ‘I should have done something’, she _had been_ there, and she knows, it had been different but oh, Maker, she knows. Because she still feels it.

“You are scared,” she says softly.

“Terrified,” he admits, still staring at her with that strange look in his eyes. “It... Doesn’t seem right.”

“It won’t put the past right. Nothing will. But perhaps it will put the future right.” And as she speaks the words that she is certain are not hers, she feels them tugging at her own heart. Perhaps this is not about the past. Perhaps this is about the future. For certain this is too complicated for her to understand.

* * *

 

Rainier is standing at the bridge between the main part of the keep and the tower, looking down at something. He seems oblivious to her presence, even when she comes closer and stops beside him.

When she looks down, it seems there is something scattered on the snow and rock below. Flowers. White flowers.

She looks at him, and the pensiveness written over his face, notices the sadness in his eyes, some old sorrow, like a foundation stone. There are questions swirling in her mind slowly like the snow around them, but she understands that kind of sorrow, and so she does not ask.

“For my sister,” comes a quiet explanation, his usually rough voice softer, soft like the falling snow. “Illness took her when she was a child.”

She grips the stone wall, because the sudden realisation makes her stagger. Briefly she wonders if he had seen his sister’s face back then, in those other childish faces...

“I still see her, in dreams.” A quiet pause, and the silence is heavy with pain and memories. “Back, when...” he breaks off, but he does not have to finish because they both know what he is talking about. “For a moment, I saw her face in their faces.” A desperate intake of breath as he struggles for control. “I still see it, in dreams.”

Without thinking she reaches out to put a hand on his shoulder, where the scar is. Something tightens in her chest; his scars run deep, very deep; there could be no harsher punishment than his own memories.

He looks at her, startled by her touch, his gaze a question, as if he did not understand why she does it. She does not comprehend that either; all she knows is that she understands this kind of suffering which settles deep in the heart and makes it difficult to live, this ‘I could have done I should have done but never did’ that torments him. It is different, different cause, different. But the emotions are similar, somehow.

But first and foremost she understands pain at the loss of someone so close that it feels like losing a piece of your heart, a piece of childhood, a complementary mirror image, because she had felt like that before she found out that Fergus made it through the war alive. And for that moment all what matters is that when she looks at Thom Rainier’s face right now, she can see a memory of her own past sorrow.

“There are flowers growing nearby. Edelweiss. It’d be a half-an-hour hike.” She does not stammer, but the pauses between the sentences are long, because the words come difficult to her. It is difficult to discover that for the first time, she actually sees a man in him, just a _person_ like she is, just another life, no more, but no less. It is even more difficult to admit it, to admit that she has seen him as a question, an answer, a problem, many things but not quite actually a person, and she is now so ashamed of it that her cheeks burn, and she is grateful for the cold which masks it. “If you’d like.”

He is clearly surprised by her offer. “Thank you, my lady,” he says at last. There is this look is his eyes that is amazement and admiration, and relief, and slightly baffled but infinite gratefulness.

* * *

 

The flowers look like tiny stars, soft to the touch like snowflakes. Not orchids, but Liddy would have loved them. He watches the flowers falling down, a little snowfall.

Lady Cousland is standing beside him, watching, too. Then hesitantly raising a bunch of flowers she is holding in her hand. He nods, and she lets the flower fall, spreading her fingers like for a blessing.

She is like the flowers, fair and soft. He looks at her and sees all the Wardens’ ideals and legends mirrored in her deeds, and sees a heart that is scarred but warm with compassion. She is, he thinks, a sign from the Maker. A proof that even in a dark and dirty world, there is good and luminosity, and that means _everything_. And it is different than with the Inquisitor, because she _knows_ , has known _all along_ , and trusted him, and it is different is all the simple ways which become so complicated that he cannot even trace them.


	10. Chapter 10

The Deep Roads seems familiar to him every time he descends underground, and they are all the more frightening for it. Because the familiar things are darkness and whispers and flickering shadows, and sometimes when they make camp and he glances away from the tiny fire, he shudders. The darkness of the Deep Roads is dense and sticky, like mud or tar, it clings to the mind and to the soul and it is difficult to shake it off, to wash it away. All too similar to the darkness he carries within, in the memories of his past.

“Cold?” lady Cousland asks, stopping beside him, briefly touching her hand to his to check if it is warm, as if he was a child. Her gesture is just a reflex, a habit, but there is something moving about it, something that touches him to the core. It is normal, usual, a gesture she would offer any other of her Wardens. And, given to him, it means acceptance, it means he is one of them, fully, because even if they do not know of his past, she does.

He cannot help smiling at her, hesitantly, gratefully. In the dim light, against the background of stone and shadows, she seems like a snowflake, soft and light, just a whisper. “No, my lady. It’s just the Deep Roads, I guess.”

She nods, pensively. “They’re... Well, deep is the proper word to describe them.”

“Aye, that it is.” He watches her as she stares at the dark entrance to yet another tunnel. “Aren’t you afraid, my lady? Of what you might find down here?”

“I’ve found many things down here. I’d never wanted to even know that some of them existed. Most of them.” Her face remains calm, but something flares in her eyes, and her smile is frightening. “But the most frightening things I’ve seen are not darkspawn but what you can find in people, in the deep roads of the heart.” The smile is gone from her face and her eyes go frozen, with a sadness trapped within, some deep sorrow he cannot even name. And then with a shock he realises it is pity, and that she maybe does not even realise how strongly she feels for him because sympathy comes natural to her, and it is like a blow to the guts, and he lets out a choked breath. She looks at him, then, and her face softens. “You would know, Thom Rainier, wouldn’t you?” she asks quietly, but each word is crystal clear and stabs like a well aimed dagger.

“Yes,” he answers curtly, his voice hoarse with guilt and remorse and self-loathing.

Her sigh is like a tired breath. “I know, too,” she mutters. “But I also know that some roads lead up, and there is a way out at the end of some tunnels.”

He does not answer because he does not know what to say, and can only stare in shock at that woman who knows both so much and little about him, who knows all about him and speaks his deepest fears and most timid yet most ardent hopes as if they were her own. And he swears, through the darkness but not to the darkness, he swears to that light that is somewhere there at the end of the tunnel, he swears all over again that he will shield her and protect her, and even die for her if need be, because of the way her words resound in his heart and make him hurt but also make him alive.

* * *

 

By the time they returned from the expedition, Rainier was barely lucid, and it was nothing short of miracle that he somehow managed to get back to the Keep mostly on his own feet. The wound has him half conscious and abed; some new vile poison the darkspawn have found somewhere in the depths. Velanna works her magic, and the wound heals, but the fever holds on.

Wounds are nothing new for him, and over time, he took many wounds for her. One that had him limping for a fortnight, another, when he almost lost an eye, many, many more. He does his job, like they Wardens all do, protecting one another without hesitation, but he is different in that. Gives himself wholly into that, making that a sole purpose of his life for a moment. Sometimes, when she notices the look on his face as he charges the enemy, she thinks that it might be his sole purpose, and that should fill her with gladness, she used to think it would feels her with gladness, but it turns out that all it leaves her with is the ashen aftertaste of sadness and pity.

She sits beside him sometimes, thinking, watching. In this fight with death, he seems almost passive, very mellow. He is just as mellow when he talks to her, she realises, too exhausted to even feel dread at the discovery.

He moves, parched lips muttering something. “Mockingbird, mockingbird...” It sounds like a song, and with morbid curiosity she listens for more.

If he died, it would be an easy escape for the man he used to be. If he died, it would not be fair on the man he is now. So either way, he does not deserve to die; not that way, at least, not like this; a swift death in battle, if anything.

She leans over him, brushes damp hair off his sweaty forehead because she is learning how to take gratitude, and it seems that sometimes gratitude smells of illness and sweat and feels sticky at her fingertips.

“Don’t die, Thom Rainier,” she whispers, her voice going that too-soft note over his name, again. She does no longer have to guard herself not too speak his name too harshly because that soft way of speaking it is a habit now. “Stand up and breathe.” And, a little shocked, she realises that is what she wishes on him. That she wants to see him breathe again, not only in the literal meaning of the word. That she wants to see his burden lifted.

It is not the same; similar, but not the same, and whatever happens now will not take back her past, nor his. But there is... There is that tentative feeling whispering at the back of her mind and lodged in her chest, burning like the fever which is holding him in its clutches, the feeling she has tried so hard to decipher and the only explanation she can find is: meaning.

No matter what she has done, nothing can undo the past, save Highever as it had been, save her parents; death, no matter what, always is and will always be just death, and _nothing_ can make it better. But she had a choice, and she could either forget Highever and let everything go to waste, or hold it up in her memory and give it meaning. And, her head spinning from that fever that is not fever at all, hands trembling as she puts the pieces together in her thoughts, it dawns on her that maybe it is the same for him, because he could have left the bodies and carried on as he had been, making those deaths just another ones in a record of meaningless memories, like Rendon Howe had done, or he could look at his sword and his hands and _understand_ , and he did, and once he stopped running he changed his life. And it does not right the past, does not undo those deaths, but somehow in a weird and twisted but not a wrong way it gives them _significance_. It is not only about the memories one carries, but also where one carries them.

And, for some reasons which she cannot name, it is important. Nothing has been able to mend what had been broken in the past, and this will not mend that either. But, feeling his forehead burn with fever under her palm, she suddenly realises that for some reason it is very important to her to know that for every Rendon Howe, there may be a Thom Rainier.

And she realises – she, who wished death on him – that she does not want him to die. And there can be no clearer sign than this quiet change of her so reluctant heart.

“Breathe, Thom Rainier,” she whispers, her fingers smoothing over the scar on his shoulder. “Stand up and breathe.”


	11. Chapter 11

Maybe it is thanks to Velanna’s and Reuel’s healing arts that in another week Rainier is up and walking again, though weak as a kitten, something that makes Oghren and Nathaniel laugh at him friendly, and though he brushes their jests away with rough words, she can see the quiet gratefulness in his eyes. And when he looks at her, she wonders whether he heard her whispered words back then, whether he remembers. She wonders if it was not her words that finally made him fight.

“Reuel tells me you’ve visited me, my lady,” Rainier tells her one day, approaching her tentatively in the main hall, where she is standing with her arms wrapped around her, watching a shield hanging on the wall.

Duncan’s shield; memories, meanings. Perhaps it is time someone used it.

“As I would visit any of my Wardens,” she says, softly, letting the words sink in. Letting him read all the meanings he needs to into this phrase, because there is no lie in this; he is one of them, a Warden. Accepting that does not come easily to her, but she remembers his forehead burning with fever and his sweat staining her fingertips, and how she did not wish him to die but willed him to live despite everything, against everything, against herself.

He smiles briefly, not looking at her but away; a smile she was not supposed to see, so relieved it is painful to watch. She looks at Duncan’s shield, recalls Ostagar, asks the memory of Duncan the questions she knows she will have to answer herself.

“This belonged to the previous Warden Commander,” she says, quietly but clearly, touching the shield. “Maybe it’s time it got used again.”

There is disbelief in Rainier’s eyes, and fear, of her, or himself, of the meaning her words carry. “My lady, I... I don’t...”

She looks at him and he cannot finish, cannot say how he thinks he does not deserve it. It was one thing not to wish death but life on him, and it is another to see him live that life and have to life hers with him in it. But she decided life is what he deserves, and she has to go through with that decision. That is what Duncan would do; Grey Wardens, they are called Grey for a reason, she still remembers clearly how Duncan killed Jory at Ostagar, and how there was remorse in his eyes, but he still did it. And besides, it is a waste of a perfectly good shield.

“You’re a Warden, Thom Rainier, and this is a Warden’s shield. So take it up and use it, because that is what Wardens do. Take up the shield and protect others.” She reaches up, takes the shield off the wall, turns to Rainier.

For a moment he looks as if he was about to kneel before her, and she forces the shield into his hands before he can do so.

“Thank you, my lady,” he says quietly. “I will use it well.” The sudden hoarseness in his voice might be emotion.

She wishes to ignore it, but she cannot. She nods at him; a peace offering he will not understand it as such, but will accept nonetheless. “I know you will,” she admits, a confirmation, because she is certain of that, she has seen enough to be certain of that.

For a moment, before he bows his head to thank her, he looks at her as if she was Andraste herself, his eyes burning with the words he cannot say, he is unable to say. All the better, because she would not be able to accept them.

She can accept how he sacrifices himself to protect her in battle, she can accept his respect and tentative, hesitant attempts at something akin to friendship – very shy and infrequent because he does not feel entitled to that; she can accept many things from him. But she cannot accept his gratitude, because what he wants to thank her for has been a lie. She is not certain what it is now, because part of her wishes him to live, and another part of her thinks it treason to even try to really befriend him.

“My lady?” he asks, when the silence becomes too loud to bear.

She shakes her head. “It’s just memories.” Of Ostagar and Duncan, and what it means to be a Warden. Of Highever – of home – and of the temple of the Sacred Ashes, of the memory of her father telling her to live, and how she choked on tears and her inability to do as the vision – spirit – _her father_ said.

And she understands that is what she has asked of Thom Rainier, to _live_ despite the feeling of guilt that will not fade nor let go no matter what they do. A harsh sentence, to live when one feels one should have died.

“You are sad, my lady,” he observes quietly, not daring to ask the question because he feels he has no right to, by now she knows him well enough to know that.

She looks at him, into his face, into his eyes clouded like the sky before rain. “So are you, Thom Rainier,” she says, the words rattling in her chest like bones before she speaks them. “But no matter how difficult it is, we have to live with that.”

Something flashes in his eyes before he looks away. “It’s difficult to watch you struggle to live with that, my lady,” he confesses.

Momentarily, she freezes, scared by the implication of his words. Maker, please, do not let him, she thinks, Maker, please. She forces her lips to smile. “No one said life would be easy, Thom Rainier.”

“It isn’t,” he admits, easily, because he is used to life being that, and however difficult it may be, he knows it, is used to dealing with it. “But it should be easier on you, my lady,” he says, and the look in his eyes softens.

And she breathes out a sigh of relief at the sight, because it is not what she feared, Maker be praised. It is only his wish to make the world easier to live in for whomever he can, after he took the world from those poor souls, and though it will never even out, it seems right in the ways she cannot name, it seems a just sentence, both punishment and redemption in one.

“Sometimes it gets easier,” she offers, not quite a lie, a consolation they both need right now.

“And all the more difficult for it,” he says quietly.

She goes silent for a moment, ponders a thought. “Perhaps it should be that way.”

He gives her a long, thoughtful look. “It sounds ominous.” He shakes his head and laughs again, but his laughter is strained, forced. “Sometimes your insight is frightening, my lady.”

She smiles, briefly, but this time it is honest. It feels scary to her, too, not these thoughts she speaks sometimes but how he listens to them, and the respect and admiration in his eyes. He should not listen to her words like he does. “I think maybe it’s been enough scary things for one evening,” she says. “Come on, Thom Rainier, let’s go watch Warden Oghren drink Constable Howe under the table.”

He says nothing in reply but a laugh escapes him, unguarded, heartfelt, _alive_ , snuffed out as quickly as it comes because he feels it is improper.

“I’m not Andraste,” she says, forcing herself to jest because of the way he sometimes looks at her as if she _was_ , and those words carry too much meaning within, too much for this evening laden with meaning already. “But I think it’s no sin to laugh.”

“Sometimes it feels like it,” he admits, briefly glancing at her.

But he looks away quickly, and that is why she does not ask, even in jest, if he meant the laughter or the Andraste part. Sometimes, she thinks, it is better not to know.

She never wanted the responsibility: saving Ferelden from the Blight, rebuilding the Grey Wardens, dealing with the Architect, and then with the premature Calling they all felt, and how she did not let them go because she knew that much, at least, and ten years was not the time, and thus she saved them, at least.

And now Thom Rainier looks at her as if she could save him and she does not want that, either, she never wanted that. Never wanted to but agreed to do that when she conscripted him, agreed to help him; he might not know it yet, but she knows. She knows _he_ is the only one who can save himself, and all she can do is help – something she _has_ to do.

She willed him to live, and now she has to remind him how. And if she does that then maybe she, too, will recall how to live.

She smiles up at him, a friendly smile, which feels weird on her lips because part of her honestly wants to do it, and part of her resents the very idea but knows she has no choice in the matter. “Come on, Warden Rainier,” she says, speaking his name _normally_ for the first time. “I’ll try to convince Reuel to tell us a nice Warden legend. With griffons in it,” she promises.

He laughs, quietly, but it is heartfelt and painfully honest. This is no new beginning, not yet, but she can hear in his laughter that a tiniest part of something broken years ago is mended. She tries to laughs herself, too, to test if what she hoped for works, and her laughter comes out slightly baffled and breathless with surprise because for the first time in years it is not rueful or dry or bitter and it does not hurt.


	12. Chapter 12

He watches as she walks out of the hall, strains to hear the soft sound of her footsteps for a moment longer. A sudden bark of strangled laughter brings his attention back to the table and to Nathaniel Howe.

“The Maker certainly has a twisted sense of humour,” Nathaniel comments, looking at him over another pint of ale.

“Excuse me?” He does not understand, he truly does not. Yes, he feels something for her, but whether it is infatuation or admiration or something more is not important, because she knows who he was. She knows who he was, and so he does not think what it is he truly feels towards her – gratitude? friendship? reverence? something entirely more down to earth and much less noble? – whatever it is, he calls it loyalty, and there is no lie in that.

“You’re falling for her.” Nathaniel takes a swig of ale. “And here I thought Justice falling in love with Kristoff’s memories of his wife while walking around in his corpse was _weird_.”

Thom is appalled at the comparison, and he opens him mouth to snarl at Howe and demand an explanation... But then suddenly he feels dread creeping down his spine in droplets of cold sweat. Half-remembered rumours come back to him: the mentions of Highever, and something about it having been burnt down, and the name Howe, and he wonders briefly how exactly it was that the Howes lost Amaranthine to the Wardens...

He cannot breathe. Maker, is really Nathaniel alluding to... _What_ exactly had happened in Highever back then?

“What do you mean?” he rasps, pressing his hands flat down onto the table to stop them from shaking.

“My father, Rendon Howe, her father’s friend... He betrayed teyrn Cousland and had him murdered, and his family and his people with him, for power and wealth. She was the only one to escape the castle alive, with the help of the previous Commander. Her brother made it because he was already away, gone to war. And then she listens to your story and agrees to recruit you.” Nathaniel laughs again, bitterly and mirthlessly, because he is talking of his own father. “Maker, now that’s rich... Well, maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised. She recruited me, after all, right after I attempted to kill her.”

Thom cannot breathe. “But she forgave you,” he manages at last, his voice choked.

“Yes, we worked it out. I wanted to avenge my father and realised he had not deserved that.” The spite in Nathaniel’s voice is directed at the ghost of Rendon Howe, but Thom feels as if it was aimed at him. “She was right to do what she did.” Nathaniel looks into at him, his eyes keen and perceptive and reaching deeper than Thom would like anyone’s sight to reach. “She can’t forgive you,” he says, and there is almost something like pity in his voice. “It wasn’t her. And whatever answer she wants, she will not find it because it wasn’t you.” Nathaniel gulps down his ale, gets up, grimly nods a goodbye and leaves.

Which is good, because Thom is too shaken to move, and company is the last thing he needs. He can barely bear his own.

* * *

 

“Warden Rainier,” lady Cousland says with a little slightly crooked smile he has grown to cherish. She always calls him that when she is a better mood; she never jests, but it is as close as she comes to jesting, the slight change in her voice, how it seems lighter. Like glass catching on a flare of sunlight. Maker help him.

He cannot meet her eyes, does not have enough courage to do so.

“Ah.” There is no surprise or disappointment in her sigh. It sounds as if she had been wondering when the realisation would come, and not if. “So you know.”

“Nathaniel told me.” The words feel like stones, hurting his throats as he speaks them. He cannot speak to her, how is he supposed to...

“Nathaniel is a very honest man, sometimes brutally so. He might seem unkind because of that. But he is not.” She goes silent, waiting for his answer, but none comes. “Look at me, Thom Rainier,” she says softly, her voice gentle over his name. She is like that: gentle and calm, despite being a hardened Commander and a Warden and despite her past.

He wonders if she knows what power her voice has over him when she speaks like that, when she speaks his name as if it was not an accusation but just a name. He has almost come to believe it is, during those past months. Now he no longer knows what to believe.

Reluctantly, he looks up at her, because he cannot defy her voice.

She is watching him closely, and there is curiosity and something deeper and perhaps darker in her eyes, but there is no malice, and the darkness seems to be... It is sorrow, and a past tragedy like a scar marring her mind, and he understands all she does is because she has to _know_ , just like he needed to know he could be a better man. Strangely, she seems to be interested in precisely the same.

“It changes nothing between us,” she says evenly. “I knew all along. But you didn’t need to know.” She pauses. “I needed you not to. I needed to get to know the man you have become, without you knowing...” she breaks off. “Without you knowing,” she finishes, a little more sharply.

He shakes his head. “It changes everything.” His voice sounds hollow even to his own ears.

“Does it?” She moves her head, just an inch, not quite cocking it but her chin is now tilted upwards slightly, and she looks at him closely. “It does not suddenly make me a different woman.”

“To me, it does.”

“Ah.” A smile, crooked like the first one, but this one is sad. “I’m sorry you had to see I’m not that perfect Warden you thought I was. Everyone, it seems, has a darker side.” She shakes her head, and the look on her face could be wry amusement if not for the seriousness in her eyes. “Grey Wardens,” she snorts. “Grey indeed.”

“No,” he says suddenly, determined. “No. You’re not like that.”

Another smile, this one bitter. “You know very little about me.” And then she sighs, and the bitterness and grimness and darkness go away, leaving only an exhausted woman. She may be a Grey Warden, she may have done things she would rather forget, but there is a part of her that is still calm and gentle and soft like her voice when she speaks his name.

“I know you wanted an answer,” he says finally. “There is nothing grey or dark about that.”

A lopsided smile. “Isn’t there?”

Perhaps there is. But he cannot find any fault with that. Maybe she hid the truth – not that he ever asked or even considered it – and maybe she did that out of that eerie curiosity, but still she treated him like just another Warden, almost like a friend, and that is better than he could have expected in Orlais. She took his old name and used it as just a name, something he had forgotten how to do, but she has reminded him, and for that alone he is grateful.

Her brow furrows. “You seem upset,” she says quietly. “But not by me.” Perceptive, as always.

“By myself.” The past came back to him, not like a scar it used to be in the Inquisition for a moment, a long time after his confession of his true identity, but like a fresh wound.

There is compassion or perhaps pity in her eyes, and her lips twist as if in pain, and she seems even more surprised by that than he is. “I am sorry,” she says, looking away. “That... That was not my intention.” She sounds shocked by the admission.

He is dumbfounded. So maybe she _wanted_ to hurt him. He might have even agreed she had the right to do so; it was not him, but it had been all too similar with him, so perhaps that did not matter. But in the end she is still sorry for it, genuinely sorry. And he cannot quite wrap his mind around that.

“Don’t be sorry, my la-... Commander,” he corrects himself. He has no right to call her otherwise.

“Ah, I will miss the ‘my lady’ thing. Serves me right.” She shakes her head again, then looks up at him. “I am sorry. You’ve been though this once. I... I don’t think you should be going through it again. But I can’t take back what I did.”

He cannot bear that anymore. “Maker, my lady, you did nothing!”

“I did. I did this, and now you can’t even see because all you do is remember too clearly, and it veils everything else. I know. It’s been the same for me when I heard your story.” She takes a breath. “You’ve come so very far,” she says, and he can see how much those words cost her. “Don’t let me destroy it. Please,” she adds in a whisper, then turns and walks away quietly, her shoulders slumped as if under some terrible weight.

He will never, never be able to understand her. And, Maker help him, he cannot stop admiring her, even more because of her flaws, because she strives so hard to raise above them, and in the end she does so.

He returns to the table, looks at his pint, still half full. Grabs it and pours the ale onto the logs in the fireplace. He has gone that way once before, and he will not do it again, even if the mess of half-finished and half-formed thoughts whirling in his head was to kill him through lack of sleep. Which, he thinks, would still be merciful.

* * *

 

She cannot sleep. She prays to the Maker and curses herself and prays again and curses again, and still she cannot sleep, her thoughts feverish. She has watched him, sceptically first and then in disbelief and then baffled and choking on the question _how_ , but amazed at the workings of the Maker all the same, despite herself.

Has she just destroyed it all, has she destroyed all his struggling and hard work? His fall had been his own doing, yes, but if he falls now it will be her fault, just hers, and she will not be able to live with it because... The realisation hits her like a knife right in the guts, and she staggers, because it had not been him but oh it had been so similar with him and it hit too close to home so what is the difference, but she staggers as it dawns on her that the man he is now does not deserve that. Because he carries his guilt like a sword and the memory of a Warden who saved his life like a shield, and uses them to fight himself to be a better man, and he _is_. She did not know him back then but she was in Denerim and she remembers Howe, and she had been in Highever and she remembers Howe’s soldiers, and thus she knows what kind of man he used to be. He is a different man now, she can see it more clearly than most because she had been there.

Nathaniel can certainly see it, too, and probably he wonders what would have happened if his father had felt any remorse or guilt instead of taking pride in his actions, and if she would have let the arl live if he had sought atonement. And she thanks the Maker every day that that Nathaniel does not ask her about that, for she would not be able to give him an honest answer because she does not know.

She smiles bitterly. She is not half as luminous as Rainier considers her... thought perhaps she can understand why he would do so. But she cannot give him forgiveness, it is not hers to give and never will be. But what scares her the most is that a part of her _wants_ to give it, because Rendon Howe had been a friend turned traitor, heartless and greedy, but Rainier is not that, he has a heart and a soul weighted down by guilt, and all he is trying to do now is to atone, and he is the very image of a penitent sinner, and he is _genuine_ in his struggles. And what she has done can destroy that, and if she takes away his redemption she is no better than he used to be.

And she is afraid of that. And she would hate to do that. Because he has willingly and repeatedly risked his life for her, and though she knows he does not value his life very much, he has done that to save her and she cannot just throw that away.

She wonders how great a sin it is to take a chance to be better from someone, and she finds she cannot answer that. But she also knows she would rather not find out. He cannot put right what he had broken, but he can put right what someone else has made wrong, and he does that, and maybe that is the way of the world.

It is enough for evil to triumph if good people do nothing. So she cannot imagine what evil it is to take the goodness from someone who has managed to overcome himself to find it.


	13. Chapter 13

He works tirelessly; he has never worked on something quite so small and detailed, and it is difficult, but when he works the thoughts lay dormant in his head. And while he has no words for her, because putting it into words is far beyond him, he can put those unsaid words into a piece of wood by the great care with which he shapes it, and thus she will know.

He throws away piece after piece, never satisfied with the final effect, and sets to work again, and his hands are now scraped all the time and she would have noticed but now she cannot look at him, cannot look him in the eye anymore. And by the little sad smile on her lips and the way her voice forms over his name whenever she has to call him or give him an order, he knows it is not loathing nor contempt – well, she knew of his past from the beginning. But while earlier she was focused and strangely curious, now she seems lost and even afraid, and he cannot think of a reason why she should behave so. But he wants her to know all the things he cannot say because he does not know what to say, and so he reaches for another piece of wood.

And then he almost laughs when it dawns on him it will never be perfect enough because nothing ever is, and no one is perfect, even her. And that she had known of his flaws and still accepted him in some way, and then trusted him to protect her, and even if that was all out of some twisted sort of curiosity, he cannot blame her, because of the way she says his name.

So he works on his imperfect gift that will still be a good enough message, and she will not mind because nothing is perfect. Things are not perfect. People are not perfect. It comes somehow as a surprise to him that he suddenly compares himself with other people as an equal. It is because of Warden Blackwall, who had saved his life, and because of the Inquisitor’s friendship, and because of the way lady Cousland says his name.

Maybe he was falling for her, before he learnt of her past. Whatever it was, it was because after facing his own past he was actually starting to believe that this new him had anything to offer, in friendship, if in nothing else. And because she has been honest about this from the start, and set the boundaries clearly. And because she never shunned him away, and her kindness and not-quite-friendship had been genuine even if she does not realise it yet.

But now when he thinks of her... He cannot. It is so warped and complicated and twisted and... Maker, it seems plain wrong. But is had not been him, and it had not been her, and it is enough for him to hear her say his name as she does, so maybe this is not entirely wrong. Maybe what he feels has always been just gratitude. Loyalty, he calls it loyalty, and there is no lie in that.

The Wardens have no past, everyone seems to think that, Wardens themselves first. But seeing Nathaniel Howe and lady Cousland, and himself, he has a hard time believing that. It is very difficult to just forget a past you know about.

* * *

 

Her fingers move across the griffon’s wooden feathers gently. It is not perfect. And yet it is.

A wooden paperweight shaped like a griffon, holding a laurel wreath in its paw, the message is clear. And it is sitting on a pedestal, and that is clear, too.

And she does not know what to do with a man who used to be who he _was_ , and now is who he _is_ , and tells her without words that he admires her. That even after her slip, he reveres her. She knows why he would feel like that, or at least she thinks she knows and understands, but still, it is not right.

“Oh, wow, that’s nice.” Sigrun peeks into the room and notices the griffon.

She ignores the remark. “Sigrun, could you please call Warden Rainier here?”

Sigrun grins. “To talk, huh?” And winks. “Sure thing.”

“Thank you,” she answers. If you only knew, Sigrun, she thinks, if you only knew. But there is no reason she should destroy Sigrun’s little pretty fantasy of an out-of-a-novel romance happening right there. _She_ does not care if Sigrun thinks that. And if Rainier does, there is nothing she can do, because Maker her witness, she has been honest with him about that and done nothing to encourage him.

* * *

 

“Did you know,” she asks when he enters the room, “that in stories, children and animals will never approach someone who is evil?” And she thinks of how the children flock around him when he visits the nearby village, and recalls the look in his eyes, and understands that she cannot even begin to comprehend what he must be feeling in those moments.

He clearly does not know what to answer. “No,” he says at last, his voice rougher that usually. “Is this what you called me for, my lady? To talk stories?”

“Isn’t life a story, Thom Rainier?” Her voice is soft, for some reason, as if she was telling a goodnight tale to a child. “You would know,” she adds.

Yes, he would. He has created a story for himself and lived up to it. Created a story for himself because he needed others to believe he was better in order to believe it himself. Just as she needed others to believe she was strong enough to be the leader they needed in order to believe it herself.

She recalls a song; a romance ballad, Leliana must have sung it at some point someday, or maybe Nathaniel when he was deeper in his cups, but why should she remember this song in particular is beyond her. “Touch me gently least I break,” she quotes softly, to herself.

“M-my lady?” he asks, baffled, unsettled. He does not understand.

It is not about guilt or forgiveness, as he seems to think. It is not about friendship or even loneliness, as the words she has just quoted might suggest because he does not understand. She is not certain what it is about, but it is about none of those things.

“It’s from a song,” she explains, looking at the confusion in his eyes. “Memories give and memories take, touch me gently least I break,” she quotes, speaking the words softly, and they fall from her lips melodious, almost like singing.

There is fear in his eyes, she can see it now. Fear of the past that has been haunting him ever since it happened, that will always haunt him, there is no escape from that, she knows. But that past was a would already scarred, and then she reopened it and it is too difficult for him to deal with that again, for one needs to live on to make a difference, and to do that, one needs to breathe.

She walks closer to him, wondering if he is feeling it too, the same fever that is consuming her thoughts, if he is feeling that trembling deep in the chest. She cannot think, and each breath burns, and she is shaken to the point of utter calm. Whatever is happening right now is beyond her, greater than her, transcending sense and reason and even mind. But her heart knows.

She cannot forgive him because it had not been her. He cannot ask her forgiveness because it had not been him. But she understands, and perhaps if she tells him to stop fearing to live, he will listen to her.

Slowly, she takes his hand, gently, least they both should break. His hand is curled into a fist, and shaking, and she gently uncurls his fingers, spreads them a little, her other hand on his wrist to keep him from moving away. She hears his ragged breath as she touches her hand to his, palm to palm. Their hands fit, like any two hands do, but differently. Fit like two pieces of something broken ages ago.

“Stand up, Thom Rainier,” she says softly. “Stand up and breathe.”

He looks up at her then, lips parted, he wants to ask something but he can find no words. And she is glad he cannot, for she has no answers for this question that sets their thoughts on fire.

She turns away, first her gaze and then her head and then her body, turns to leave. But before her hand slips away from his, it lingers, because in that space when their hands touch the boundaries are crossed and breached, and invisible walls come crumbling down and fill some of the gaps and hollows places in her heart that even revenge and her brother’s return and everything that happened between her and Nathaniel were not able to fill.


	14. Chapter 14

Nathaniel watches her, curious, but says nothing, and she is immensely grateful that he makes sure Sigrun keeps quiet, too. Because this is something very brittle, very delicate. Something shifted between them, something very subtle, but she knows, knows it by the way Rainier glances at her sometimes, only to immediately look away. In the way he keeps avoiding her, and refrains from talking when he cannot avoid her, barely speaking more that a short greeting or a quiet goodbye, walking away quickly as soon as he can, as if the mere sight of her hurt him.

And that is why she needs to talk to him. Or rather: she needs him to talk to her. So just before dawn, when the Vigil is quiet and slightly unreal, she slips out of her room and walks to the chapel, knowing she will find him there, at a time he can be there alone with his thoughts and regrets and all the questions he is afraid to ask.

“My lady,” he greets as soon as he notices her, bowing his head in respect.

She can see how his eyes dart from one side of the chapel to another, how he would rather flee than talk to her, than even be in the same room with her. But he cannot, because there is only one door and she is standing at the threshold, blocking his way out.

And then his gaze meets hers, reluctantly, hesitantly, and she understands she cannot _force_ him to talk to her, because that would only add to the damage, because it would be unfair on either of them. So she steps forth, towards the statue of Andraste, and lights her candles, lips moving in a silent prayer for her parents, for Oriana and Oren, for Fergus. For guidance, for words that would help her get to Thom Rainier and bring him back to life.

She can feel his presence, and she knows he keeps a distance, far enough to be respectable and far enough that she knows he feels uncomfortable in her presence. For that, at least, she cannot blame him.

The words that come to her mind then scare her, but maybe that is what she needs. Maybe he needs to be shaken back to life. Maybe she needs that, too, this realisation she never wanted to acknowledge, but it is there, and she can see it every time she looks at him and even now, when she does not see him but knows he is right there.

“I killed him,” she says quietly, her words more a breath than a whisper, but she knows that in the silence of the chapel Thom Rainier can hear her. “Rendon Howe. I killed him.” When she pauses, she can feel the stillness in the air, and even though she does not see him she knows he is frozen to the spot. “I had prayed to the Maker for revenge for months, and then after I killed him I thanked the Maker for giving me that, at least, and I didn’t care if that prayer was a sin, because all that mattered back then was Howe’s blood on the blade of my family sword.” She turns, looks right into Rainier’s eyes. “It didn’t help,” she says quietly, but clearly. “I hoped the pain will be gone, that the hole in my heart would at least scar, but it didn’t help. He felt no remorse, he _boasted_ about what he did and so I don’t regret killing him, and it was justice, but it _didn’t help_.”

When she walks closer, Rainier hangs his head, looks away. She stops beside him.

“Look at me, Thom Rainier,” she says quietly.

He obeys her, as he always does. Just as meek and mellow as he was while fighting off fever and death, and this time the thought chills her to the bone.

“You regret. You changed your life.” She watches as he tries to look away again, puts her fingers under his chin to keep him looking up, at her face. “If this is not enough to convince you to live, I have no other words to change it. But know this, Thom Rainier: death didn’t solve anything, didn’t change anything. Yours wouldn’t have, either. Will not. But your regret can change things. Your life can change things. It _changes_ things. Not the past, but the present, the future.” Her hand slips onto his shoulder, thumb brushing across his tunic where she knows the scar is underneath. “So if not for yourself, live for _them_.”

Live for me, Thom Rainier, she thinks, smiling at him sadly, live for me because I need to believe. That is what it is about, she realises. Hope. Believing that no matter what, there can be good in this world even in the most unexpected places.

* * *

 

It has been over ten years, but on that single night each year it feels the same. She is standing at the battlements, looking up in the sky, at the stars that looks like sparks flying up from a burning castle. Fergus manages better than her, somehow, despite all, and she thanks the Maker for it, and wonders that perhaps it is because he had not seen anything. She had, and the sight is forever burnt under her eyelids. And perhaps she could not have done more, but there is that ever-present feeling that she still _should have_ done more, and nothing Fergus says to her can convince her otherwise.

There is a creak of the door, and heavy footsteps, coming to a sudden halt.

“I am sorry, my lady,” Thom Rainier says quietly. So he knows what day it is. “I shouldn’t...”

“You can stay, if you wish,” she says to the air around her.

A surprised silence. Steps, lighter now, coming to a halt beside her, at a respectable distance. His gaze on her as he watches, and that strange mix of compassion and sorrow and guilt which she knows is in his eyes, and that is why she does not look at him because she does not want to see.

“Do not torment yourself over that, my lady,” he says, his rough voice going softer, trying to soothe, to do something he has no great experience in but still he tries.

“It doesn’t work, no matter how much you repeat that to yourself,” she replies. He would know, oh, yes, he of all people knows that.

He reaches out, briefly touches her palm, just a ghost of a touch, as if he was afraid of touching her, as if he was afraid that could hurt her somehow. Her first instinct is to snatch her palm away, and her hand jerks. He withdraws his hand instantly.

She makes an effort to turn towards him, to let him know that she is not offended, nor repulsed, that she was simply taken aback and acted on instinct. When she looks up at him, his eyes are obscured by the shadows his wind-tousled hair casts on his face, and she is relieved that she cannot see what is in his eyes. For a moment, they both just look, he into her eyes, and she into the questions he is.

“What happened back there... You’re guilty of nothing, my lady,” he says softly, at last. “Believe me,” he adds, with a mirthless, hollow smile. “I know about guilt.” He bows to her briefly, turns away and walks back into the Keep.

And she stands there on the battlements, immobile, her heart hammering wildly in her chest. Because yes, of all men, _he_ would know guilt, and she believes him.

The chilly gust of wind feels like a breath of life, and she almost chokes on it, can almost grasp it. But there is one thing she must do before that. He eased her burden, and she has to try to ease his. She has no right to offer him forgiveness, because it had not been her and it had not been him, but maybe if she sets him free she will also finally free herself.


	15. Chapter 15

She is used to always finding him working, so she is surprised when she comes out into the courtyard and finds no sign of a new toy or anything visible. Rainier is leaning over what turns out to be a small piece of wood, laboriously carving it into a proper shape with his knife.

“May I?” she asks, coming closer.

He moves his head, indicating the box next to him, and only then she notices it, and a couple of small objects, similar to the one he is making, inside. She comes closer, takes out a wooden figurine and brings it up to the light to examine it. It is a dwarven warrior with an axe. Another one, though with too sharp features, is clearly an elven mage. The figures are all somehow similar to dwarven sculptures, lines simplified and symbolic, but recognisable nonetheless. There is another dwarf, which looks like Sigrun. There is a mage wielding a sword instead of a staff, looking very much like Reuel Caron. There is an archer that obviously is Nathaniel. A little army of chess figures.

“It’s not ready yet,” Rainier mutters, still bowed over his work.

“They’re beautiful,” she says honestly.

“Seneschal Varel mentioned you two play chess occasionally.”

She does not reply, her hand diving deeper into the box. The figure of the king resembles Duncan a little, and she wonders whether it is supposed to be Duncan, of whom Rainier has heard from her a few times, or Warden Blackwall, or neither of them and yet both of them – a symbolic image of the exemplary Warden. The figure of the queen is still missing.

She looks at the piece of wood in Rainier’s hands, at how gently he is working on it. Looks at his hands, little cuts all over his palms, because he is used to working with bigger pieces, not something as small as chess figurines.

“Your hands,” she notes.

He glances up at her. “Nothing to worry about, my lady. It’s something I’m used to.” He looks away as the layers of meaning he probably did not plan to put into the sentence echo in the air.

She chooses her next words carefully. Calm, confident, but soft. “It doesn’t have to be.” She comes closer, crouches on the ground beside him, reaches out to touch the wooden figurine. The queen. His scarred hands have been carving something on her head mere moments ago. A laurel wreath, like a crown.

“She’s...”

“She is.” He nods. “She _is_.” Layers of meanings again, layers of meanings like layers of stone and rock making up a mountain, like layers of sand making up a river bed.

“I’ll have elfroot ointment ready in an hour or two,” she says in the most casual way she can, getting up. “There’s a figure missing,” she observes.

“One of the towers. It’s not finished.” A long pause and a few breaths, as he is thinking what to say next. “Sigrun said... that it should be me.”

“Perhaps it should.” She catches his gaze as he looks up, and holds it. “Tower. Strong. Steadfast. Moving straightforwardly.” She feels as if she was playing a game of chess with their minds and souls right now. “I expect to see you in the afternoon, Warden Rainier.”

She can feel his eyes on her as she walks away. Can imagine his face, too. Sceptical, maybe. Disbelieving.

Strong, steadfast – he is those things. And he is not. He is good and yet he is not. He is a tangle of contradictions. A tangle he was close to sorting out, but then she interfered, accidentally, and he is now at a loss, not quite at the beginning of the way, but many steps back from where he was. So while he is uncertain and solving things, she must be certain, she must convince him.

Or maybe he has never been quite certain. Still, she must convince him, must be confident, unwavering. He will see through her lie, just as she would see through his.

She has been wondering, a lot. Who can do more good: a man who believes himself to be a good man, or one afraid that he is not?

They are both maps of wounds, and some of those should always be remembered. But now that his words have somehow lifted the guilt from her shoulders, she can see more clearly. It has been years. And the scars should remain as reminders of the past, but although a scar can hurt, it is not the same as a wound, and she thinks that perhaps it is time for healing.

* * *

 

The air in the room is humid with steam. She is standing over a cauldron, crushing in some herbs, loose tendrils of her hair curling and framing her face. In the patch of sunlight, it looks like a halo over her head.

They had almost been friends at a time, and she easily returned to that. But she knew all along while he did not, and she already had time to make up her mind about him, while he has to paint his mental image of her all anew. Fair, he thinks, recalling his own past. But it does not make things any easier, because she is just where she has been, while he is tense and hesitant and still utterly befuddled.

She nods, acknowledging his presence, but continues to work, so he waits, watching her. Trying to define who she is to him. His Commander, certainly. His friend? Is that even possible? He shakes his head. There is only one conclusion he can come to: she _is_. Something, that is for certain.

Not his redemption, because only he himself can be that. Not forgiveness, because it had not been her, and thus she cannot forgive.

She is a hero, but not any chosen one, and special only because of what she decided to do, how she decided to handle what fate had thrown at her. She is no herald of anything. But deep down she has that patience and softness and sympathy and understanding, and it gives her a luminosity like that of the sun caught on the strands of hair around her face. She is glass, stained glass – no longer pure, but with a depth of colour, and the light still shines through, and oh, how brightly she gleams.

“Your hands, please.” She is already standing beside him, an opened jar on the small table next to them. She dips her fingers into the ointments and gently applies it to the older and newer cuts all over his fingers and knuckles.

He holds very still, like a wild animal about to flee, but so paralysed with fear that he is unable to move. She touches her hand to his wrist, and he knows she can feel his pulse, fear hammering right there in his blood, under her fingertips.

“You’re afraid,” she observes softly.

“Terrified,” he admits.

“Of me?” A pause. “For me?” She looks into his eyes. “Don’t fear, Thom Rainier.” There it is again, the soft lilt of her voice when she says his name, like a lullaby. “There’s nothing to fear. It’s just healing.”

“Healing,” he echoes is a strangled, hoarse voice. Healing. He looks down, trying to avoid her eyes, glances at her hand. There is a fresh mark on her palm.

“You burnt your hand.”

She shrugs. “Hot water. You get plenty of that while making potions.” She hands the box of ointment over to him. “Your turn.” And then she reaches out and reluctantly he holds her palm up, and puts a generous smear of the ointment over the burn, trying to touch her skin as little as possible.

“I’m not made of glass, Thom Rainier,” she says patiently. “I will not break.” She moves away, swift like a current, and sets to tidying up the room, and the space where her hand has rested in his just a moment ago all of a sudden seems too empty.

Healing, he repeats in his thoughts, panicked and hopeful and beyond that, he cannot even begin to name all the emotions in that complicated tangle that tightens around his throat like the hangman’s noose.

She will not break, he can see it; she _is_ glass, but already broken and then formed anew in fire, and she will not break again. And the little cracks that have been there... some of them are suddenly gone, and he wonders if this could have had anything to do with the words he said to her a few evenings ago.

She glances back at him over her shoulder, pondering something. “Most of the good medicine is bitter,” she says at last.

He laughs at that. Bitterly. “Oh, it definitely _is_. I’ve had a taste a few times.”

Her eyes bore into his, two gleaming points in the shadows veiling her face. Two wells. Two candles. “Most of the good medicine is bitter,” she says quietly. “But perhaps not all of it.”

He holds her gaze. “And you think this could be my case?” he asks dryly.

“Ah, no.” A sad smile appears on her lips. “Sometimes relearning to laugh can hurt the most. I would know. Believe me, Thom Rainier.”

“Why do you keep calling me that?” The question is out before he can even think of it, because suddenly he feels he _has_ to know.

Her eyebrows arch in confusion. “It’s your name, isn’t it?”

“Not the name. The tone of your voice when you speak it.”

A smile twists her lips, mocking, then sorrowful and ashamed. “I won’t give you this answer. Just know it’s a name to me, not an accusation.”

He recalls how he had to manoeuvre every conversation carefully so that the Inquisitor would not know he never was a Grey Warden, how he had to pay attention to every answer, and over time they started coming to him all of their own, becoming a habit.

“It was an accusation,” he observes. Without bitterness, even. Maker his witness, he had used that bloody – ah, what a perfect wording – name as an accusation often enough himself. And then she started speaking his name in those soft tones and he realised it could be a name again, never _just_ a name or _simply_ a name, but a name nonetheless, one he could use.

“Do you think I had the right to make it so?” she asks quietly.

He looks into her eyes. “And if my answer was ‘yes’?”

“Then I’d have all the more reason to make mine a ‘no’, wouldn’t I? It’s a name. Rainier. Sounds like ‘rain’.”

“Rain washes things away,” he snaps, bitterly, because his name washed nothing away, only brings it back every time, but it _should be_ so. He is running in circles, one moment accepting and facing his past, as he had faced it in the end and walked out of it a stronger man, and another back to all the self-loathing and contempt.

“Rain leaves traces in the damp earth,” she retorts instantly. This is a woman who has been playing on the chessboard of Ferelden for over ten years; he has no chance of outtalking her. “Rain can be storm, and flood, and destruction. And can be the blood of growing wheat and the source of life.”

“You are saying I am to choose?”

She shakes her head. “I am saying you _had_ _chosen_ already. And that it should not have gone the way it did. But now that we know each other’s past, perhaps it’s time to be just Wardens.”

He sighs, goes to the door. “I can’t forget, even if I wanted to. And I _don’t_ , because I need to remember.” But he also remembers her voice, telling him to breathe.

“Yes.” Her gaze is piercing, as if she was trying to look into his soul. She already has, on a few occasions. “Yes, you do. But there is a difference between remembering the past and letting it cripple us.” She smiles at him, a sad smile, one that make her eyes bright with all the tears shed in the past. “Believe me, Thom Rainier. I would know.”


	16. Chapter 16

She finds him in the wide hall where they all dine and rest together on most evenings, but it is very late, and he is there alone. Without a word, she settles on the bench next to him, reaches for his pint and takes a sip of ale.

“Complicated, isn’t it?” she asks pensively, her keen observant eyes focused on him.

“Complicated? It’s an understatement.” He has not drank very much yet, but he is tired, and he feels mellow. He is not exactly that, had never been, but has taught himself. It has been a relief to follow orders rather than to give them, especially when he knows he can trust those orders.

“It’s been complicated for me, too,” she admits, then sighs. Her fingers curl around the pint. “I wanted to hate you,” she confesses. “Because you reminded me of the past too vividly. I really wanted to hate you, but kept myself at bay and treaded carefully, not to let you know.”

He snorts, actually amused by her words. Nathaniel was right, the Maker must have a strange sense of humour.

“You fooled me, then. I’ve almost believed we were...” he breaks off, because the word ‘friends’ seems out of place, and he has no other name to describe it.

“Befriending?” she supplies. “I suppose, in lack of a better word...” She takes another sip of ale. “I wanted to hate you,” she continues quietly, looking down at the ale. “But I was so busy being careful about what I said and how, and time kept passing, and suddenly I noticed we’d shared bread and we’d shared night watches on the road, and that we’d fought together, and that you’d saved my life so many times I could no longer count them... You were no longer a stranger I could’ve hated easily. You were.... you. One of my Wardens. One of us. And I think I still wanted to hate you, but _couldn’t_.”

“That...” He looks at her, at the way she keeps her head bowed not to look at him. At the way loose strands of hair fall over her face in white wisps. “That must’ve been difficult for you. Must be difficult,” he corrects himself immediately.

“I’ve had to judge people, many times, since I joined the Wardens. I’ve held lives in my hands far too often.” She raises her hand, looks over the inside of her palm, curls and flexes her fingers as if her hand was a curiosity. “But I’ve learned one thing.” Then she lets it rest on the table, expectant. “Life is very brittle,” she says quietly. “Too tough to end even when it’s broken, but it’s very brittle, delicate like glass; make a scratch and it will show forever, the light will start falling through the glass differently.” She curls her fingers under her palm, and it looks like disappointment. “And you kept telling me in every way you could that you left your life in my hands.” She turns to him and looks up into his eyes, seeing how he is watching her, how he has been staring at her. “And it is just as brittle as any other. But I don’t think I’ve seen such a pattern of scratches before, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen light going through in such a complicated way as it does with you, Thom Rainier.” She takes his hands in hers, tired of waiting, holds them, holds them as if she held his life in her palms. “You don’t believe me.”

He shakes his head, trying to hold his hands up, so they would only brush hers at most, but she tightens her grip, makes his hands rest in hers, as if she wanted to feel the weight of his sins and his deeds. “It’s more complicated than that. It’s...” How does one even untangle a knot like this? “Words like ‘light’ sound strange in a sentence describing me,” he says at last.

“The world is a strange place, Thom Rainier,” she answers, his name on her lips soft like rain. “I have darkness in me, and you have a light, we all have dark and light in us, it’s just the matter of what we choose.” Her grip on his hand loosens, and now she holds his palms in hers as if they were birds about to take flight. “I’ve seen you make many good choices.” She withdraws her hands. “Sleep well, Warden,” she says gently, just before she turns to leave.

Just before she leaves him behind with more questions than before, and with just one answer, one the Inquisitor and some others in Skyhold used to give him, one the other Wardens now give him, but he seems unable to quite believe them. But when she gives him that answer, he can believe her, because even if it had not been her, she knows.

He thinks how it is ironic that it were her attempts not to let him know of her aversion that coaxed him into believing again, that reminded him his name can be a name again. And he could never hold it against her, not _him_ , _he_ is not entitled to judge anyone but himself, but it turns out that she does not hate him, that she cannot. And he cannot even begin to think of the words to describe how it makes him feel to have discovered that she _knew_ , and still accepted him despite everything, even despite herself.

He allows himself a small flicker of hope that maybe it means that she is right, that maybe there is enough light in him to fend off the darkness. He even dares a brief thought that maybe there is enough of the light for him to try living again, but it still feels like a sacrilege of sorts to even contemplate that.


	17. Chapter 17

He heads for the bridge connecting both towers, a place where he ends up very often whenever he is at Soldier’s Peak. Up there, he can be alone with his memories and regrets and hopes, and in that solitude and silence he can try to sort out who he is now.

But this time, as soon as he opens the door, he stops. A female voice is singing quietly – so softly it is more humming that actual singing – a voice like glass, clear and pure and echoing with high, piercing notes. He stands, frozen to the spot, not knowing whether to proceed or to turn back, not knowing if he should let lady Cousland know that he is there. Finally he decides to do so, and walks towards her, slowly, hoping he will not startle her.

It seems she is oblivious to his presence, as she does not turn, does not even spare a glance when she hears his footsteps. But he knows she hears them. She always does.

“All is undone, ash in the sun, cast into darkness the light we had won...” She lets her voice drop down into silence as he stops beside her.

“It is a sad song, my lady. And a dark one, too.” He remembers the melody and the words, put together by the Inquisition’s minstrel. And he remembers the events these words spoke of, though deep down in his heart it feels as if the words were about _him_ , about _his_ sins. Not that he would ever be worthy of a song.

She gives him a long stare, then looks away suddenly. “It resounds with whatever darkness we have inside, Thom Rainier,” she says quietly.

It takes him a moment to understand that the look on her face is shame, that she is ashamed of not having told him, that she regrets that he learned of her past. Perhaps it would have been a lie by omission, except that he had never asked, that she had a right to leave her past behind, as do all Wardens. But she never left that past behind her, just as he never has, not truly, both dragging bodies behind, for two entirely different reasons that somehow seems two parts of one gruesome puzzle. Him, the darkest shard, and her, the brightest.

“You have no darkness in you, my lady,” he objects. This is not admiration speaking through him, this is not him considering her an idol – he knows the Wardens are called Grey for a reason, he knows what she has done as a Warden, what she had to do. She had to witness darkness, such that he wishes he could not imagine, but he was with the Inquisition and so he can. But even though the darkness has brushed past her, and stained her, like glass, she is a source of light.

She shakes her head at his persistence, laughs quietly, bitterly. “Ah, Thom Rainier... You really should know better by now.”

“So should you.” The words are out of his mouth before he can even think about them – the truth, nothing but the truth. “My lady,” he adds, respectfully.

She glances at him, surprised, watches him closely. “Do you know how the Grey Wardens are called in Orlais? Ah, of course you would.”

“What does that have to...”

“ _Les Gardes des ombres_ ,” she says, her accent too soft. “The Shadow Wardens.” A pause, heavy with unsaid words. “We are.”

“I am aware of that,” he says slowly.

She gazes at him again, another of those long, watchful looks. And then, suddenly, her sadness is gone for a moment, and she laughs, surprising herself as much as him. “We’ll never agree on that, will we?”

“I guess we won’t, my lady.” The short burst of laughter comes to him so easily that it leaves him baffled afterwards.

In a moment, everything is back to normal, him carrying his guilt and she her regrets. But in that brief instant he could see how would it be if he never knew and if she forgot, how could it be if things were simple, if their pasts were not those warped mirror images. For a moment, his heart was so light it hurt. When he looks into her eyes, he can see the same pain there.

“That song you quoted once, my lady,” he begins. “Do you remember how it goes?”

“You are not asking me to sing it, are you?” she asks incredulously.

“No.” He shakes his head. It is a mystery to him why he is even asking when that quote she has uttered back then is still lodged in his mind like a thorn.

“Cannot undo what is done, cannot bring back what is gone, memories give and memories take, touch me gently least I break,” she quotes softly, her voice going into a melodious lilt. “It’s a sad song, Thom Rainier.”

“We did not break,” he says quietly, in a hoarse voice, because he has no experience at all in speaking of what he _feels_ , in speaking of his most bitter regrets and deepest fears and most ardent hopes.

He remembers the gentle press of her hand against his, he remembers how it answered all the questions he never dared to ask, how it filled those empty spaces in his heart that could be filled and a few which he thought they could not, and how it soothed all the old wounds and scars. He remembers how the relief hurt much more than the pain.

“That is because we are both broken already, Thom Rainier,” she says softly, and he cannot breathe because he feels the gentle press of her hand against his. “And putting ourselves back together from the pieces.” She looks at her hand pressed gently against his, and then she looks into his eyes. “Touch me gently least I break,” she quotes. She asks.

And because she let him hear her sing, and because they shared a laugh, and because this whole talk seems too unreal, he puts his hand over hers, tentatively, because he does not think this is right. He does not think that she should even ask that – why should she ask that of him, as if she were the one seeking reassurance and absolution, as if he was the one to grant those, as if he was able to give _anything_ – but when he looks into her eyes there is a gleam there, something brittle as glass, something delicate that is going to shatter if he withdraws.

Gently, he presses his hand to hers. Something closes, something opens, something smoothes out, something stabs him right through the soul. There is a light in her eyes, shy and hesitant and hopeful. Blinding. Something deep inside him gives way and shatters, burying him under the rubble.

Memories come back, clear and piercing, and he knows she is not his absolution, that she cannot be, and that neither can he. He knows that his absolution is in that little space where their hands touch. He also knows he will never dare reach out towards her again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first song mentioned is a quote from the "Grey Warden" song from DAI - so, not mine.


	18. Chapter 18

He does not hear her come, bowed over the candles. He does not hear her – just notices a presence near, and looks up.

There is a soft, bittersweet smile on her kind face. A smile that pierces right through his heart and soul, and her eyes are luminous like the prayer candles.

“My lady.” He briefly bows his head in greeting.

“So you do pray,” she observes and for a moment her smile becomes warmer.

He sighs. “I try.” Then, he snorts quietly. “Not much experience in that.”

“To live is to learn,” she quotes.

“Canticle of Reuel Caron,” he remarks dryly.

She laughs, briefly, quietly, but it is heartfelt, he can hear it, can hear how the laughter comes from deep inside her, from where she shelters what is left of that carefree hopeful young girl she used to be. In a way, this laughter hurts him even more than her sorrow, because it is a reminder of the things she lost. And a reminder of his past, of the things he took away, irreversibly.

“It can’t be that difficult to light a candle,” she remarks light-heartedly.

“It isn’t,” he mutters in reply. “The words are.”

Her face becomes pensive, and then she comes closer and takes the candle from his hands. He is too baffled by her actions to protest.

“Then I will light your candles, Thom Rainier,” she says, very softly, his name on her lips like the quiet murmur of rain. “And you will light mine.”

“My lady...” He is at a loss. And terrified, for no apparent reason.

“How many candles?” she asks gently.

He takes a breath, feeling as if something tightened around his chest – painful – shameful – terrible memories holding him in their grip, as strongly as ever. But whenever she speaks his name that softly, his burden momentarily lifts a little.

So he takes another breath and speaks their names, each one a trembling exhale. And then she speaks the names of her family. And it is all eerie and too complicated and utterly terrifying, but it feels right. The burden is still there, on his shoulders, but he can breathe a bit more easily.

She takes another candle and puts it into his hands so that he would hold it, and lights it. He wonders whose name she will say next.

Her hands are warm and gentle around his as her fingers curl around his palms. “This one is for you, Thom Rainier,” she says, and the look on her face is a hope for a smile.

“My lady, I...” He does not deserve it. He certainly does not feel as if he did.

She holds his hands. “Remember? Our hands fit together.”

He tries to protest, dismiss that fact. “As do any two hands.”

She smiles up at him, and her smile is serene, wise, terrifying, a smile he would like to run from because it is too understanding and too good for him, but there is no way out because she is holding his hands and squeezes them lightly. “Then maybe it is a lesson for us all to learn,” she says, her voice deep with conviction.

He watches her let go of his hands, and turn and leave, and that is the only this he can do: watch. There are no words left in him to react to what she says, what she does, how she says his name, there is only that overwhelming feeling that is thankfulness and humility and loyalty and so many things all tangled together than he does not even try to discern them. She is not Andraste, he knows that, ah, no, she is not. But she is like a candle, fair and elegant and warm, and ah, so close; so simple but still a point of light in the darkening world.

Very carefully, as if he was holding his own soul – or rather hers, or her hopes, whatever it is – a prayer? – it must be hers, because he would not be half as cautious with anything of his – he takes another candle. And then he lights it, for her, and prays, fervently, as he has not done in years, in ages. Prays for her to find peace and respite, to find a sliver of happiness. His gratitude and admiration and respect melt like the candle wax, melt together into one ardent prayer for the woman who could have taken his life from him more painfully than death could, but instead gave his life back to him and keeps forcing him to live. And this life is both injustice, the punishment he deserved – deserves – and the mercy he should have been denied.

Maybe she was right, he thinks at last, remembering her words about breathing and death and life, and finding new strength to bear his burden in the thought. Maybe he should carry the lives, not the bodies.

But late at night, when the past comes back again, all too clear, to haunt his dreams, he cannot breathe. He cannot breathe because he chokes on the memories that cannot be erased.


	19. Chapter 19

When she walks out onto the battlements she is not in the least surprised to see him there. When memories and dreams plague her, this is where she comes, too, to that quiet spot between the ground and the night, the only place where her thoughts can calm a little and rest for a while, because the sky is infinitely patient and so are the stars.

“Nightmares?” she asks, coming to a stop beside him.

He almost jumps, whirls towards her, alarmed, for he has not heard her steps, then calms down. Deflates.

“Yes,” he answers in a rough voice, one word, curt and clipped and sharp like a sword, but the blade is directed at him, not at her.

Not darkspawn nightmares, then; she does not need to ask; she knows. The fever leaps up to a burn in her thoughts again as she wonders how should she read than he cannot sleep because of his past on the same night when she wakes up shaking because of dreams of Highever. Wonders whether that is a coincidence or whether the Maker’s hand, or perhaps both, because what looks like a coincidence does not have to be one.

It is not her he wants to ask, and the forgiveness which he wishes he could beg for is not hers to give. But perhaps if she can show him how to remember in a different way, in a way where guilt will become a sorrow and not self-loathing, as she has painfully learned over the years, maybe when he will be able to sleep peacefully some nights then she will finally be able to rest, too. She has no right to do so, because it had not been her and it had not been him, but maybe if she sets him free she will also free herself at last.

She puts her hand on his shoulder, thumb smoothing over where she knows the scar is, one of many he bears now for saving her life, and the lives of other Wardens, and the Inquisitor and the Inquisitor’s companions before, and many others.

“Breathe, Thom Rainier,” she whispers, soothing, in quiet tones, like a lullaby. “Breathe.”

He breathes, but it is ragged like an exhausted and worn-out soul, and his shoulders shake, but he presses his hand against his mouth and no sound comes out.

She knows how it feels to lose those close to you, to lose family. She wonders how it must have felt to lose oneself, and how it must feel to find oneself again.

“This...” comes his muffled whisper at last, voice hoarse and hollow. “This will not...”

“No,” she agrees softly, feeling his shoulder tremble under her palm, and finally understanding what it is about. Not guilt, for it will always be there. Not forgiveness, for it cannot be granted, not in this world. Redemption, atonement, yes, that, but there is more. “Nothing will not mend what had been broken back then.” It is a truth he already knows, and much too well, but it has to be spoken out loud. “But I’ve been watching you, the man you are now. And I’ve seen you save my life, and others, and carve toys for children, and do many other good deeds. And at some point I discovered that for some reason it’s very important to know that for every Rendon Howe, there may be a Thom Rainier.” Her hand tightens on his shoulder, just so, she has to touch gently least he breaks. Or she breaks. “A man who carries his guilt like a sword and a memory of a Warden who saved his life like a shield, and uses them to fight himself to be a better man. And for some reason that makes a difference. And now I know why.” She grips his shoulder tightly, because it does not matter whether her touch is gentle, for they are both already broken. “That reason...” She raises her other hand, touches his arm, forearm, then the palm pressed firmly against his mouth, gently prying it away. “That reason is _hope_. Because a world where a change like _this_ can happen is bearable to live in.”

There is a sound, half a gasp, half a sob. He does not break. He _shatters_. But that terrible weight pinning her down is lifted from her shoulders, and now she has enough strength to keep him standing. But she does not.

She lets him slide down onto his knees and grasp at the wall and rest his forehead against the cold stone. She goes down with him, and he holds onto her palm as if it was an anchor, a lifeline. “Breathe, Thom Rainier,” she says, clearly, softly, like a benediction to him or to her or to them both. Maybe it is not only about his redemption. Maybe it is also about hers. “Breathe.”

He does not dare to reach out to her, even now, so she reaches out to him and holds his head against her shoulder as he weeps. It is painful, but tears can cleanse, she knows. Even revenge or justice cannot always achieve what simple tears can.

And when he calms down she grips his hands and pulls him up. “Stand up, Thom Rainier. Stand up and breathe.”

He looks at her searchingly, his eyes deep like lakes at night but no longer as dark with self-loathing as they used to be. Opens his mouth and tries to speak, but no words come out and he closes his mouth and then opens it again, as if gasping for air. Then, finding no words, he takes her palms in his, gently, as if afraid to touch her, bows over her hands and kisses them fervently, all gratitude and humility, and all those thing she doubts either of them can name. When he straightens, she raises her hands to frame his face, her fingers soothing like an absolution, goes up on her tiptoes and presses a soft kiss to his forehead, and watches his eyelids flutter close.

And then she puts her arms around him and holds him, and his hands tentatively settle on her back, and he clings to her. It has nothing to do with friendship or loneliness. But everything to do with hope and mending broken things.


End file.
